Tag Archive | haiku

Other stories, other poets (book reviews) – novels-in-verse

Much like eclipse-viewers look indirectly at the sun, we can get a glimpse into life situations which may or may not mirror our own through novels-in-verse.

Click each title link to open my no-spoilers recommendation in a new window/tab for each of these BooksYALove favorites.
**kmm

book cover of After the Kiss by Terra Elen McVoy published by Simon PulseCamille and Becca don’t realize that they share a school, a coffeehouse, and one boy’s kiss… until an ill-timed cellphone photo makes all the connections fall into place.

Told in alternating chapters by each teen, their free verse ranges through the emotions that they must deal with as they try to reconcile what they thought was true with what reality is, After the Kiss  of Alec, the haiku-writing baseball star.

book cover of Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe published by VikingSara feels like her life at the ballet academy, far from her small New England hometown, is a never-ending Audition, as the dancers constantly compete for lead roles, for advanced classes, for the eye of handsome student assistant Remington.

Is he really interested in Sara? Can she continue to keep up with her schoolwork and her dance lessons and her hidden relationship with Remington? Only her poetry journal hears her fears and dreams.

book cover of Karma by Cathy Ostlere published by Razorbill

Religious turmoil becomes armed warfare in 1980s India, and Maya is caught in the upheaval almost as soon as she arrives with her father and the ashes of her mother, brought “home” to the family which disowned them when they married, a Sikh and a Hindu who thought that love would overcome all.

Is it Karma  that brought their only child to a place she’s only heard of, far from her birthplace on the Canadian prairies, that separates her from her Bapu, that makes her versified memories a clouded mirror?

(all review copies and cover images courtesy of their respective publishers)

Haiku (reflective) – the sun and not-the-sun

2012 annular solar eclipse seen at sunset near buildings

courtesy of techeblog.com

It’s Haiku Day for the WordCount 2012 Blogathon, so I took yesterday’s (invisible-from-Florida) annular eclipse as inspiration:

Strangest afternoon,
Sun-disk nibbled by the moon –
Hiding in plain sight.

Yes, I know that haiku isn’t supposed to rhyme – it just happened…
**kmm

(annular solar eclipse photo (c) http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/solar-eclipse-2012-ring-of-fire-pictures)

Haiku – editing your thoughts

It’s the ultimate editor’s blue-pencil job: paring down your dreams, thoughts, inspirations, message, and intentions into that oh-so-regimented haiku format (and today’s Wordcount Blogathon theme). Yep, 5-7-5 pattern, no deviations (but no rhyme-requirements either).

‘T ain’t easy, but as an antidote to our these-days tendency toward logorrhea (and blogorrhea), the disciplines of haiku can make us slow down, refocus, edit our writing, pare it down to the essentials.

Zen Ties  is the second of John Muth’s books [YouTube book trailer] about a Zen master panda living in a regular American neighborhood [publisher site] – this time Koo, his haiku-speaking nephew, comes to visit:

Tea was very good
My cup holds emptiness now
Where should I put it?

There can also be a humorous side to haiku’s rigor, as shown by Guyku: a Year of Haiku for Boys,  by Bob Raczka and Peter H. Reynolds [review] [publisher site], which features this summer-related guyku:

Lying on the lawn,
we study the blackboard sky,
connecting the dots.

The GiggleIT Project is a free international online writing project for students, and it includes haiku as one of its 2011 competitions. Once their teacher or librarian registers a class/group, then students’ creative writing and artwork can be showcased to a world audience. I should know, since I’m the GiggleIT publicity chair!

Voices of children,
All colors and all ages,
Lift us with laughter.
**kmm