Welcome. We are on Day 21 of 30 days of VerseLove. Let’s circle back to haiku for brevity, but with a new perspective from today’s host.
Our Host
In May of 2025, Sharon Roy retired from 31 years of teaching middle school in Austin, TX where she lives with her husband. Now she enjoys riding her bike to take herself on field trips to swim at Barton Springs, bird with Travis Audubon Society, admire the art at local museums, read outside in parks and take classes with a local lifelong learning institute. She volunteers with Travis Audubon Society, leading a monthly poetry-writing and birding walk. She’s enjoying more time to write poetry which she shares at her blog, Pedaling Poet: Riding to Find the Strange and the Sublime.
Inspiration
I’m doing a slow read of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace with Simon Haisell of Footnotes and Tangents. We’re reading a chapter a day for all of 2026. On New Year’s Day, I wrote some haiku about the new year including looking forward to the slow read. I decided to continue the haikus to help me better understand my reading and to keep track of Tolstoy’s many characters. Rewriting War and Peace in haiku has become my passion project for the year. I write haikus about what happened in the chapter and how it connects to my life and to other works of art.
Process
- Pick a text that you are reading or a favorite text.
- Rewrite part of your selected text in haiku, three lines of 5/7/5 syllables.
- You might want to focus on a favorite scene, a page you turn to at random, or the chapter you read most recently. You could also zoom out to focus on the whole work.
- You can write one haiku, a few, or many.
- You might also choose to write haiku about how the writing connects to your life or to other works of art.
- Give credit to the original writer and text.
- Need a syllable counter? I sometimes use howmanysyllables.com.
- Want a jump start? Maybe one of these questions will spark your writing today:
- What book has stuck with you lately? Why?
- What wisdom did you gain from the text?
- What do you agree or disagree with most from the text?
- Which character would you like to have dinner with? What would you discuss? What question would you ask the character?
- How does the text relate to your daily life?
- What memory from childhood does the text evoke?
- What could our community learn from the text?
- If you’ve taught this book, why did you select it? What did you hope students would gain from reading and discussing?
- What’s one thing that you admire about the author’s craft?
- If Paul Thomas Anderson made a movie of the text, what song would he use as a needledrop to set the mood for a scene?
- If you made a playlist to accompany the book, what song(s) would you include?
- What painting or sculpture would make a good companion work of art? Why?
Sharon’s Poem
Pale Blue Eyes
Tolstoy’s War and Peace in Haiku
Book I Part III Chapter X
Richie Rich Rostov
Buys his fourth horse for two gold
Beautiful French horse
Rostov’s beloved
Tsar looks straight into his soul
With his pale blue eyes
I hear Lou Reed sing
Linger on your pale blue eyes
Effective mashup
Nik could be singing
“Sometimes I feel so happy”
Today’s needledrop
Humble tsar mumbles
“What terrible thing war is
A terrible thing!”
Out riding my bike
Altered traffic signs show me
My neighbors agree
Stop all way becomes
Stop all war, another, Do
Not enter Gaza
Local graffiti
Artists agree with Tolstoy
Alas wars persist
Tolstoy busts out stats
Nine tenths of our army’s men
In love with their tsar
Nationalism
Persists, frightening degree
Why aren’t we learning?
Your Turn
Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers.
Verselove Day 21: Reading Haiku
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (page 6)
Words found by Tracei Willis
For April 21, 2026.
Written on April 28, 2026
We had a job to do.
Ease the burdens of poverty.
Stamp it with both feet.
Like soldiers for duty.
Hair straightened. Uniforms starched.
Shoes polished. Caps squared.
Our supervisor.
Nothing escaped her notice.
That woman had three eyes.
Sharon, I love this idea and love your haiku. At my age, I tend to gobble up books but often have difficulty remembering them. This is a great way to prompt deep thinking and memory. My favorite book so far this year is The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick. Here is my haiku…
Four women confined
by the conventions of the day
Find Betty Freiden.
Her life-changing book
triggers self-discovery,
teaches new ideas.
As wives and mothers,
they learn to fulfill their dreams
and live balanced lives.
Rita, you have created a succinct review of Bostwick’s book. It sounds fascinating. “confined / by the conventions of the day” is such a great description. It helps us know the era without it really mattering exactly when it is.
Thanks, poets, for writing and sharing. I have an early, early flight tomorrow, so I have to resist the urge to keep reading and commenting, but I’ll be back tomorrow to read and comment, so please check back. Thanks!
Hi Sharon! I hate that I post so late on Tuesdays because of longer work days. But I’m here. I’ll come back tomorrow to read/comment.
I loved this prompt because haiku never disappoints and your suggestion to be inspired by what I’m reading was perfect for today. I am reading Stamped for Kids with my 5th graders, and the chapter we read was about the history of Africa and how enslavers tried to take that history away.
Re-Membering
African riches
Innovative geniuses
Roots remember us
A constant battle
Chains clash against resistance
Union not yet whole
Aimed to strip away
Language, drumbeats, and courage
Monuments of strength
But power runs deep
Mali, Ghana and Songhay
Redeeming Black Joy
©Stacey L. Joy, 4/21/26
This is powerful, Stacey. My favorite line is “Roots remember us.”
Beautiful poems, Stacey. I REALLY love your title. And the rhymes and near rhymes that carry through the haikus help create continuity and connection.
Stacey,
Love, live, live the Canva and those joyful faces. Your poem is both joyful and truthful. Poetry as history warms my heart. There was an amazing black woman on our tour who has traveled to many African countries. Like you, she epitomizes black woman excellence, and we became fast friends and had some wonderful conversations about all the things. I am so excited for your trip and traveling vicariously w/ you.
Stacey,
Thanks for writing after a long day.
Your poems are beautiful. I hope you will share them with your scholars.
These lines ring out so strong:
Love those smiling young people besides your strong words.
Kudos to you for enlightening your students with this book. Heart-wrenching poem and your third stanza brings to mind the attempt to “homogenize” America today.
Oh, Stacey, the title gives me chills. “Re-membering” becoming members again, “redeeming Black Joy” and of course, the double meaning of Joy in that last line is so beautiful. I love that you are there with your students to “re-member”
Thanks for hosting, Sharon. The slow read approach to War and Peace is fascinating. I may try to approach some classics I haven’t read in this read during the summer ahead. My poem is in response to the book Culpability by Bruce Holsinger which I thought was a pretty good read because of how it brought up various issues with AI and autonomous vehicles. My poem is more of a tease since people may want to read it.
Who’s at Fault?
a scream
a swerve
a couple’s death
a family
processing
guilt and grief
an algorithm
navigating secrets—
culpability
Barb Edler
21 April 2026
Barb,
Adding that book to my TBR list. I like the taught language here that replicates a tire screech and mark in its appearance. I met an engineer (PhD) on our trip who worked at GM and developed radar systems. He said autonomous cars are a crisis and should not be in the road, specifically mentioning Tesla.
Barb,
This poem is succint with such umph and action. The form really adds layers and leads us to wonder about the fault factor. Hence the last word – culpability is a clever closing. This is all so fascinating…lots to consider.
Barb, I haven’t read or heard about this book, but your tease worked. The first two haiku stanzas tell a tragic story, and the third one identifies the wrongdoing. I am going to order several books based on the other poems here today. Thank you!
Barb, I feel like the embedded goodness of the prompt today is all of the great reading recommendations! I am really intrigued by your poem–I’m already anti-automation, but I’m really curious to read more. That last stanza is very layered, with the tension between secrets and culpability.
Oh, yes, a great tease. I do want to read it. Your poem is so great. “an algorithm / navigating secrets” is all kind of intrigue. It makes me want to read it. I love your freedom with haiku. You should teach a class.
Barb,
I also liked Culpability.
Great job hooking the reader and capturing the book’s essence without spoiling the plot.
I love the swift way you deliver the verdict in your last line.
Barb, I think this is a perfect way to entice people to read books! Based on your poem, I would read the book in a heartbeat.
Your tease worked, Barb. This book is now on my TBR list. What a piercing poem…it cuts to the heart of the issue and the last line truly entices me to read this book.
Dinner time haikus
Laugher, chaos, celebrate
New experience today.
———
🔥Heat at which books burn.
Fahrenheit four fifty one
Protect memories
She asked for some time…
Sit together, pages turn-
Good night rebel girl.
Pride and Prejudice.
Hard to understand writing.
Got it in the end.
Inspired by cloud Atlas
A question lingers
Is Somni good or evil?
Hard for me to say
My biggest challenge in a haiku is that turn you’re supposed to bring to line three. You do it so skillfully here, especially with “protect memories” and “got it in the end”. Love how you reward a reader at the end : )
Such nice feedback- thank you!
I especially love your first haiku & can imagine you & your loved ones counting syllables around the dinner table! I have fond memories of constructing nature haikus with my family while hiking once. I love that they are such an accessible form of poetry – a great start for many!
It was a new family experience! Your vision is accurate- counting, fingers flying… excited when 7 syllables land! I’m guessing we’d try again! Thanks for the lovely encouragement 🙂
Juliet!
So good to see you on here. Thanks for accepting my invitation and making time to play with words.
I love how your first haiku sets the scene and the punch of your final lines:
Also love the way you show how you’re (or the narrator’s) still thinking about Cloud Atlas and trying to figure out the character’s morality.
You cracked open a new joy for our family! Thank you for the invitation- we’re all still laughing at the pride & prejudice “got it in the end”
Masterfully crafted! I’m in awe.
We’re a family of fresh and wobbly haiku writers- it was fun- thanks for the kind words!
Iago–villain,
or simply misunderstood?
Blinded by envy
and intelligent
beyond his peers, his brain spun
circles around them.
Did he intend to
create such chaos and pain,
or, collateral damage?
Ultimately, he
paid the same price as the one
he exacted first.
Iago is an extraordinary villain, for sure…casting such suspicion, creating such doubts…how convincing he must have been! “Did he intend to create such chaos and pain, or collateral damage?” Well-put! Poor Desdemona… and oh, Othello… how could you be so blind?
Julie, such a great play and character. You’ve captured the important details in this one and I really appreciate the questions. Chaos and pain are definitely key emotions.
Julie, I love the devil’s advocate stance that you take here. Iago has always been one of my favorite, love to hate, villains. I’m here for the rehabilitation effort! I especially like that 3rd stanza, it sounds great!
Julie,
Love how your haiku bring us into your inner dialogue with the text. Love the act of questioning.
Good questions!
Sharon,
This retelling W&P in haiku is an ambitious project, and you’re killing it! Since I’ve been traveling and falling behind on my reading, and since visiting Vietnam has gifted many counter-narratives to the one I grew up with, I’m revisiting my favorite selection form The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien is such an honest voice about the Vietnam War.
carrying Cu Chi tunnels
[after “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien in senryū]
obscenity, evil,
emotional reality
march in cacophonous
cadence in true war
stories. you know war facts? fiction
wears war’s truths better.
want a true war story?
look for the absurd, chaotic
unresolved, unfinished tale
like the absurdity of
posing in tunnels and traps
where Viet Cong killed G.I.s.
war is.
that’s the story &
the story truth.
Glenda Funk
April 21, 2026
*Cu Chi tunnel was a system of tunnels where Viet Cong hid to attack American G.I.s. Unlike other war sites, Cu Chi is the antithesis of somber and reverent. My Canva shows a person climbing into a hole where Viet Cong hid for surprise attacks.
Glenda,
I am learning so much from your poem and a little wonder struck with your image as well as poetic form. What a rich way to capture history and metaphors and bring it all to life.
Glenda, I read The Things We Carried and agree O’Brien presents a true story, just like you do in your poem. Because of this, the line staying with me is “fiction / wears war’s truths better.” I am not even talking about posing in front of war onuments.
Have you read Chris Crowe’s Death Coming Up the Hill? It’s a novel about Vietnam War in haikus. You may like it.
Leilya, i haven’t read that book but am intrigued so will put it on my TBR list.
Glenda, your Canva rendition is amazing. I appreciate the focus on truth in your poem and the hard sounds that carry their own weight. The posing in the tunnels is compelling, and I must pause to consider that behavior. The truth of war is ghastly, and I really appreciated this stanza:
obscenity, evil,
emotional reality
march in cacophonous
Powerful poem!
The Things They Carried is so creatively written, so hard, and so brave. As is your poem. How absurd, yes, to pose in the trap hole. “fiction / wears war’s truths better” and “war is. / that’s the story & / the story truth.” (And Leilya, I’ve added Death Coming up the Hill to my TBR as well!)
Glenda, I’ve been touched by your traveling poems this month, especially the ones in Vietnam. This is fascinating and painful to read. Cu Chi as “the antithesis of somber and reverent” must have been hard to be there. That last senryu is perfect truth. We should make everyone in USA’s leadership imprint that on their hearts.
Glenda,
I’m also a big Tim O’Brien fan. He used to teach at a university not that far from me, so I’ve been able to see him speak and read a few times.
Love your focus on O’Brien’s play with emotional truth making the true war story rather than factual truth.
Your quote, photo, and recent visit make your poems even more powerful.
Sharon, Thank you for all these delightful ideas, prompts, and poetry. I am in awe of how you are curating your readings and spending time these days. Your haiku feels so intentional and timely.
My inspiration comes from reading Ada Limón’s poetry over the last few weeks. I have been savoring her entire collection. She truly weaves in everyhting she reads and experiences.Her language and images point to nature and seeking pleasure as well as posing existential questions. I tried to emulate some of her style. The first stanza of today’s writing is a haiku and the rest is free verse.
Honey
The strained honey of
an afternoon turns the sweet
sunlight into joy
A whisper of a surprise
It transforms the spring buds into a tickle
Remembering to relish in the small things
The tweets, the chirps, the birdsong
The sing song of life
Being in love with the everyday
and watching the stillness sizzle into radiant whispers
Some feel slippery and mysterious
Some offer sage advice — lean into your fierce vulnerability
Some remind you to return to forgotten pleasures
Be in love with your tenderness
Memorize the face of your loved ones
Make their silhouettes protections of hope
Pollinate the clusters of closeness
Emerging out of our isolation
Witnessing nature’s confessions and pleasures
Darshna,
This is lovely and quiet, the way Ada Limon’s poems are quiet. You’ve done a nice job w/ nature imagery, so important in Limon’s poetry.
Darshna, while I recognize Ada Limon’s vibe, your poem strikes me with such a rich imagery and so much care to each word. The way you put them together makes me go back and reread, like these lines, for example, “A whisper of a surprise / It transforms the spring buds into a tickle.” So grateful you are coming here with a poem every day.
Darshna, I love Limon’s poetry. What a model. Your poem definitely reflects her. Beautiful. Your lines have such an easy flow and impart such peace, in their truths – for me, the birdsong and “being in love with the everyday.” For, if we think about it – is anything really “ordinary”?
You have been fully Limónified : ) The anaphora that always feels like it can unspool forever, the call to emotional action / bravery. And the leveraging of nature as mirror & lamp, metaphor & stage — you oughta be proud of how you emulate & innovate on her model!
Darshna, I do love Ada’s poetry and your poem is exquisite. You have so many unique phrases and have incorporated wonderful sounds and images. I especially enjoyed the opening stanza and “Be in love with your tenderness”. I feel like that line would make a wonderful fringe poem. Gorgeous poem!
Oh Darshna,
Your poem is so beautiful and wise. I’m reading this at the airport and as I read, I felt the tightness in my neck and shoulders loosen. Thank you!
Love your description of Limon’s writing:
You have captured the beauty of her noticing!
I’m going to carry this with me today and let it ease the stress of travel delays.
Darshna, oh how I love this poem. Nature is my happy place and your poem takes me there.
Last year I discovered author T.J. Klune and fell in love. I’ve collected a number of quotes from his books, and some of them turned into these haiku.
T.J. Klune dishes
wisdom from The House in the
Cerulean Sea.
I never want to be
an adult. It sounds boring.
Cause adults have jobs.
Arthur says, don’t for-
get how to be happy; make
time for things we like.
If you only do
life how others want you to,
what’s the point of it?
Cheri,
Oh, I love this! I am going to pass this on to some of my students who often share the ambivalence of being a young adult. I also will need to read T.J. Klune. Thank you.
.Cheri, I concur. If we let other decide, what’s the point of growing up? Choice is key. That’s why so many of us stay with ETHICAL ELA! Even with the great, novel and challenging prompts, we get to choose! I’m glad you chose to write so cleverly the way I feel!
Cheri, what a perfect prompt for you today with an author you love “dish[ing] wisdom” and the quotes you’ve collected. These are great. That last haiku is speaking to me today!
Cheri,
Cerulean Sea.
Indeed. Love how you introduce and then deliver Klune’s wisdom. Love that you engage us more deeply with a question at the end.
And that question comes directly from a character in the book: “What’s the point of living if you only do it how others want you to?”
Cheri, this is beautiful. What will stock with me is your line, “don’t forget how to be happy”—WOW ! What a great reminder that age is really JUST a number…
Haven’t read this yet, but now I will. The pointed question in the last line is brilliant and worth consideration.
Audio book highly recommend so you hear the characters’ voices! They’re so distinct.
Smart approach to the prompt! Love when poems teach me!! 🩵🩵🩵
Thank you so much for hosting today, Sharon.
What an interesting way to summarize and process what we read! I have been reading the Biblical book of Amos, and the haiku came pretty easily during the group study of it this morning.
Amos Chapters 1 and 2
His words are heavy
The Lord God roars from Zion
Judgement will soon come
From ancient times, God
Has revealed His ways to us
We have turned away
Punishment will yet come
I have rejected Your law
Oh, that You would help!
You have surely done
Great and mighty things to draw
Humans to yourself.
We are not worthy
Oh Lord, but You will forgive
Because of mercy.
Jeanie, isn’t it fun to see how refreshing it can be to transmigrate 17th Century British English translations of 2nd Century Hebrew and Greek from the KJV into 21st American English century views using 17th century Japanese format ?
omg I am reading Rohr’s Tears of Things, which begins with Amos! And you capture so beautifully the full emotional range of the prophet — the rage & the promise, the justice & the mercy. Thanks, finally, for moving from the Lord as a distant roaring figure to an intimate addressee of our prayer. LOVE this
Jeania,
I’m glad you were able to fold haikus into your morning Bible study group.
I feel the weight of your words:
Sharon, I reflected on responses to an anthology I helped write and edit for use in book clubs. The idea for today’s poem came from thoughts about that. Being the compiler and contributor, listening to the reactions and wondering how my work will be viewed. What’s the difference between squinting and squinching? That’s the clue to this poem.
Respondng to Reading
Reading helps me think
Seldom in a gloom do I sink
Due to new ideas around the rink.
Some just make me shrink
Squinching my eyes, maybe blink!
More reading would help them think.
Anna,
Congrats on your anthology!
I love how your first haiku gives a sense of the benefits of reading both alone and in community.
and then the reaction to the writing of others—love the shade.
Anna,
The work you share and contribute is remarkable. I love how you shape your writing into so many thoughtful ways. This is truly endearing.
I’ve belonged to a book club for year, but honestly our discussion sometimes only last five minutes. I love your verse and if you care to share, would like to know the name of this book.
Sharon, Thanks for this very cool prompt! I love your poem and now you’ve brought Tolstoy to the very present moment.
I’m reading Tyriek White’s novel, We are a Haunting that is centered on a family in East New York that is connected over generations to the spirit world. My poem explores some of that.
Hauntings
Generations fold
Overlapping time and space–
Origami wings
Linden Boulevard
Winds like a snake, connecting
Past, present, future
Ghosts walk from water
Bathe in the bay, neither here nor
there, but everywhere
What is it to have
A ghost whisper in your ear,
A gift or a curse?
Key opens pathways,
push through timeless passages,
A doula’s work
Colly’s got the gift,
the insight of ages, but
he wants to unsee
We all have secrets
that the ghosts know; some tell, some
don’t, but they all know
What is death, after all?
semipermeable space–
we’re all connected.
Dave,
Your poems do indeed give me a sense of haunting.
I find this a chilling question:
So many ghosts, Dave! I think the short form really lends itself to the haunting quality of your poem.
Dave,
There is certainly a supernatural presence within your poem.
I love your word choice of —
There is a haunting yet seductive and inviting question of what happens even in death.
Oooweee, Dave! I want to read this just from your mysterious poem! So much intrigue! There’s something about a ghost whispering that is deeply compelling.
Startlement: Albatross (after Ada Limón)
I will never meet the Wandering albatross,
not in these latitudes,
not in this year that does not reach
those cold, necessary edges.
Still—
something in me lengthens.
A page opens—
and I am already moving.
No meetings, no rooms
that hum with their own importance—
only the quiet offering
of a half banana,
love held out without tether.
They say the albatross does not flap
but learns the wind—
how to fall forward,
how to turn resistance into lift.
Down the page I go,
gathering speed—
then into the wind again:
writing, revising, thinking, reading—
the long arc,
the practiced return
that is not return.
My body learns this.
A stillness that is not stillness.
A held line through air.
And here—
here is the lift:
foraging for language,
diving beneath the visible surface,
surfacing with something alive in the beak—
a phrase, a fracture, a glint—
enough to keep going.
Half my mind rests,
half keeps watch—
I am sleeping on the wing, yes,
held not by ground
but by motion itself.
It is a solitary life, this—
but not a lonely one.
The air is full.
The page is full.
The unseen is never empty.
I land when I must—
body, battery, the small insistences of being human—
and there is love there,
steady as shoreline.
But I know now:
I am not made for staying.
Not for the long holding of land,
not for the rooms that close around a day.
My belonging is elsewhere—
in the glide,
in the long, unbroken arc,
in the way the wind remakes me
each time I enter it.
Note: I started with “Startlement” but then felt like I needed a metaphor and went researching nomadic birds. And then I found the Wandering Albatross and read about them, feeling a kind of kinship and an understanding about solitude. In “Startlement,” there is a shared aliveness,the I loosens to a we toward a togetherness, unison.I want to honor relation without collapsing into it. Solitude as fullness, not lack; movement as belonging; interdependence as intermentent and chosen, attention without appropriation.
Sarah, there’s so much depth in the layered metaphors that you have unfolded in your poem–the parallels between reading and the flight of the albatross, and then how that connected to the reading life and the connection to self-discovery. This poem is a gift! I’m going to keep coming back to it.
Oh, Sarah, what a poem. “Something in me lengthens” in the reading of it. It takes me both in (to language, to reading) and out (away from “rooms / that hum with their own importance” and “rooms that close around the day”), a flight made possible through the discovery and connection of story.
This is breathtaking, Sarah! I love the movement of it down the screen, hovering at times, then dipping, then lifting. The punctuation and line lengths (the topography of it) mimics the “sense” of it. There is this beautiful undulation of your line endings, a beautiful curving, for example, of stanza five and six that culminates into the colon that lifts “into the wind again” to the list of “writing, revising, thinking, reading–.” And again in stanza nine, the colon is used as a jumping off, “And here– / here is the lift:.” This is truly a master’s class in punctuation use and stanza construction.
Sarah,
Both your poem and your process are so beautiful. I feel the careful thinking and changing.
I love the combination of reading, writing, and flying.
This poem takes my breath away. I feel I’ve read it before, yet it holds a freshness that is so new, and so you. “The way the wind remakes me”, a tenderness that I feel in my heart.
Sarah,
I too love Ada Limón and have been reading her latest collections. The poem you’ve composed has so many layers of beauty and questions. I find myself both being startled and awed as I savor its creativity.
Sarah,
I love this paradoxical metaphor, the idea of an albatross as lifting and free while also that thing around one’s neck. Two lines pop for me: “No meetings, no rooms
that hum with their own importance—“
It’s revelatory to realize the self-importance ego of those rooms, especially knowing how little importance they hold to the world writ large. And “I am not made for staying.” is you. I see this in what I know of your career and physical movement and professional projects. And I wonder: What is it you seek? This is not a new question for today but one I’ve thought about before. Anyway, I love this poem.
Sarah, your thinking and your written words create a deep poem that leaves me with many questions and thoughts. I feel as if you wove a powerful self-portrait into a poem about the weaving/merging? of our reading and real lives. Like a really powerful poem, I have saved it to reconsider. Continue to “glide…as the wind remakes you.”
Sarah, the movement in this poem is exquisite and your use of metaphor is striking. I can’t help but think this is a personal reflection of your experience as you have been traveling and writing through the last several months. Love the last stanza and your use of anaphora. “in the glide”…..love it!
Sarah, you have created such beauty here. I loved reading of the image of the albatross, “that does not reach those cold, necessary edges” and yet somehow it still is with you. Your note at the end of your poem is equally thoughtful and rich and beautiful. I’m so happy for you to be getting the experiences you are on your sabbatical.
I’m currently reading The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr. I’m finding it fascinating and learning so much.
getting groceries
to the table is full of
gumption and intrigue
Yes it is! Your poem makes me want to read the book, because I’m sure that there’s a submerged iceberg’s worth of intrigue to be explored!
Mo, “gumption and intrigue” it is )) I need to look up this book.
I must read the book! This sounds fascinating.
I love the word “gumption,” and I’m thinking I would find that book interesting. Your haiku also reminds me of the book I’m currently reading (Scarcity), where getting groceries to the table takes on a different meaning, I imagine.
Mo,
You have me intrigued! This poem certainly captures the current state of affairs.
Ready to reaf this book.
I really need to read this one. Loved “gumption and intrigue”.
Mo,
i like how your haiku makes me rethink the simple act of getting groceries which is indeed not so simple for all. It’s easy to forget all the work behind the scenes.
Thanks for pointing me to a new-to- me book. You have piqued my curiosity.
Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer
exquisite writing
weaving through political
and family strife
guerrilleros,
colonels, Charlotte, and Grace
author’s Boca Grande
my dictionary
essential from the first page
(paregorina)
I’m riveted by
Grace, “all-knowing” narrator
whose insight crumbles
false understanding
of Charlotte’s motivations
who she really was
powerful last line
“I have not been the witness
I wanted to be”
none of us ever are
we only see a small part
of anything and
understand even less
——-
Thank you, Sharon! Fun to use haiku as a summation or documentation tool. Bravo on the Tolstoy reading and haiku work – I majored in Russian in undergraduate and I adore Russian Literature. (I enjoy reading Anna Karenina every couple of years.)
Maureen, you have taken a novel i found “overwhelming: to read at the time I (long ago) read it during a beach camping trip. I knew I only scratched the surface of understanding and I did not discuss the book with anyone! I am not proud of this and it has surfaced over the years leaving me wondering if I was just not reading carefully or … SO, it is now at the top of my reading list. I will keep you informed!
I’m so intrigued by your poem, Maureen. It’s going on my TBR list right now. I love that a dictionary has been your companion.
Maureen,
If you want to read or reread War and Peace, I highly recommend reading along with Simon.
I’ve read and loved Didion’s books on grief, but not much else. You make me want to dig deeper into her earlier work.
I’m so moved by your insights:
Alas.
Maureen,
I admire your adeptness in capturing such rich ideas and language into this gorgeous poetry. It reads brilliantly and with such beauty and ease. Thank you.
Maureen. I am, like many, adding books to my ever-expanding TBR list, and I like your book. Sounds like an amazing read. I need to retire, so I can just read and write ))
The line you chose as powerful made me think about similar things: we never are as we want to be because whatever we witness, we see for the first time. One can be “prepared” in theory to any situation, but reality will never replicate the situation exactly the same way, much less witnessing and/or responding to it. Thank you for making me think.
Thank you for offering us this opportunity to look into our favorite books again, Sharon! I love your rendering of War and Peace in haiku. It was my mandatory reading for me in 9th grade. Don’t know how my 15 year-old brain was able to process it, but it did. Your final two haiku stanzas made me think that we have this persisting issue with men who want to dominate. Across centuries and stories, certain people believe power is their right, so they try to re/shape the world around them (or the entire world, as we witness now). I am also glad that throughout centuries there were brave people who opposed those attempts. I used several literary characters for my little series.
Hopefully, my formatting stays as intended.
CROWNS OF DUST
Shadows cross the years;
old hands reach to rule again
—we rise, resisting.
The Possessor (Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë)
Locked rooms in his mind,
every heartbeat catalogued
—yet she walks past him.
The Charmer-Tyrant (Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë)
Soft voice, velvet smile,
but the walls close in lastly
—truth slips through the cracks.
The Bitter Heir (Jason Compson IV from The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner)
He clutches the world,
fists tight with old privilege
—the young break his grip.
The Warrior of Pride (Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Thunder in his chest,
he rules with fear of faintness
—gentle hands outlast.
The Golden Bully (Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby by F. S. Fitzgerald)
Marble halls echo
with footsteps of the mighty,
—but dust claims them too.
Crowns fall into dust;
new light gathers in our palms
—we guard what they lost.
Leilya – this is spectacular! To reduce each of these men into 17 syllables in such an insightful way. I’m not sure which one I love the most. That last line of wisdom is perhaps the essential takeaway – “we guard what they lost.” Stunning.
Leilya, you have described the essence of these men in syllables that show how, “Across centuries and stories, certain people believe power is their right.” I must admit that until today, while I knew about seeking power by all means, I never thought of this as A “key” part of the human condition in the way I am thinking today. While we all read and think and write, it seems clearer and clearer to me that it is only in sharing and comparing notes that we can grow to our highest thinking.
Your poem is amazing, Leilya. What a wonderfully imaginative interpretation of the prompt. My head is spinning with the possibilities for classroom use. Love it!
Thank you, Mo! I use some character analysis poetry writing activities with my YA course students and always have some wonderful poems in response. Some students open up the side I never expected to discover if not for writing.
Leilya,
Wow! This is intensely sharp and brilliant. It’s incredible what you’ve created here today with such verstality and conciseness. Thank you for sharing.
Leilya, oh yes, you have captured such wonderful characters in your poem today. I’ve read each one of these and I love how you’ve focused on key characteristics. I think my favorite is Heathcliff and I love your line “Locked rooms in his mind”. Fantastic poem!
Leilya,
I like this thematic distillation of novels. They all remind me of Ozymandias crumbling in the dust. My favorite is The Sound and the Fury. It does hone in on one of Faulkner’s themes across his texts.
Oh my, Leilya!
What a tour of men of literature.
I so admire how you boil each character down to their essence.
It’s striking to see them together within your frame:
Thank you for your insights in both prose and poetry on men wanting to dominate and also the resisters.
Also, I’m not sure I’d be reading W&P if I’d had to at 15. Glad I’m coming to it for the first time now. Wish it wasn’t so relevant though.
OH, wow, Leilya, was this all today!? So powerful. The introductory and concluding haikus show the persistence and resistance of those who claim their right to be part of society in fullness. I love the third lines on each of these men and how they can’t hold power in their grasp. Really significant poems today.
Sharon, I tried earlier and it said my post went to spam?
I am in awe of your reading and haikuing of War in Peace and connecting it to our world today. This is a powerful book in its own right and a commentary on how the more things change, the more they stay the same. I have recently read incredible, motivating books like Theo of Golden. Your poem today has me thinking of contradictions in people/life as well as books that leave me shaking my head with questions and their own contradictions, like Hillbilly Elegy.
“I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.” J.D Vance (whose birth certificate reads James Bowman)
You made it to the
Inner circle access where
Every decision
Could be questioned, why?
Yet you sell out beliefs for
Power, prestige, wealth?
You question those who
Talk of peace, making a world
Safer, better, more peaceful.
Deny roots, the gift
Education, prejudice,
Hopelessness, create
Incongruity
Abandonment, falsehoods,
Inconsistency
Why can’t we learn that
People will lie, deceive for
Moments of glory?
Well done, Anita – and you show enormous courage I think in taking on this topic. He appalls me so. I, too, read Hillbilly Elegy and wondered about human contradictions. This thirst for power seems to give a great big permission slip for evil, as you summed up
Margaret is reading the same book. She’s written a few poems inspired by that book during VerseLove, too. In your poem today, the closing question, “Why can’t we learn that / People will lie, deceive for / Moments of glory?” lingers in a complicated way. It doesn’t resolve the tension, but it does ask us to sit with it, to consider what accountability and awareness might look like in response.
I have been doing a lot of sititng with this month!
Sarah
Anita, thank you for taking on this topic of dismantling the inner circles with their greed for power and control. I, too, wrote about men who crave domination. Your final question, as Sarah notices, doesn’t offer an answer, but makes us pause and think, and may take it a step further with a concrete action.
Anita, I loved Theo. I’m glad you are raising the questions of Hillbilly Elegy. And what a great way to do it – – with poetry!
Such truth in that last haiku, and, yes, why can’t we learn? So many seem to be chasing those moments of glory right now.
Anita, thank you for your voice here! Yes, indeed. “incongruity” that’s for darn sure. So powerful!
Anita,
so glad you persisted past the spam filter.
I love that your haikus are in conversation with War and Peace and, of course, sadly, our current war.
Your questions hit me hard. Why, indeed.
How well you condense all the contradictions of this man. There’s such a sadness in stanza four…the word “deny” is perfect. The powerful question at the end leaves me shaking my head. Seems like there is no answer. Awesome creation!
The Emperor of Ice-Cream is a favorite text of mine, itself a version of Hamlet’s Act IV, Scene III speech about why we live…here is my double haiku.
We eat and get fat
So that all the worms can feast
Celebrate, shine light
Upon our rotting
Flesh and smell the scent of life
Having been lived well
I also have a line for line pidgin version…
1: When Aunty Had Die (with no apologies to Wallace Stevens)
Call da guy who rolls da fat roaches,
Da big one, tell him he bettah make
Some haupia pie dat broke da mouth.
Tell da chicks come in whatever dey like weah
And den tell da guys
Fo bring lei wrapped in auntyʻs pretty napkins.
Just let em ride, no bushit.
We stay getting fat so da worms can eat.
Oh, also, try look in da bussup drawers,
Da one wit no more handles, grab one sheet
Aunty had sew apapane on top before
And den put dat on top to cover up her frikin face.
If her stink feet hanging out, dats ok,
Dey just showing us she ded.
Make sure da light stay bright, gotta see.
We just getting fat so da worms can eat.
I do not know this book, and I am awed by your wordplay. I will now go in search of “The Emperor of Ice Cream” – thank you!
Mahalo! I hope you enjoy…I should note that The Emperor of Ice-Cream is a Wallace Stevens poem
Jonathon, I’m really taken by “Celebrate, shine light / Upon our rotting,” that bold willingness to hold celebration and decay in the same breath. It feels very much in conversation with that spirit of The Emperor of Ice-Cream, where vitality and mortality sit right next to each other without apology.
Sarah
Jonathan,
I love your two versions which bravely state our small place in the universe.
I love this idea so much! Totally using it in my YA lit class tomorrow morning as a starting point for discussion. Also, I love the idea of reading a GIANT book slowly in a community.
Today’s haiku come from my reading of Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992, Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire by Paula Yoo
How can you sit there?
Los Angeles is on fire
Anger everywhere.
Trying to protect
The family business,
Eddie Lee was killed.
Latasha Harlins
Accused of stealing some juice
Wrong place, wrong time, dead.
Rodney King verdict
Hatred and anger ignite
We haven’t learned much.
“We haven’t learned much.” – I am snapping my fingers in appreciation for your poetry here.
Sheila, I feel the urgency in “How can you sit there?,” that direct address refusing distance, refusing the comfort of looking away. It pulls the reader into the moment with moral pressure. Each haiku carries a name, a life, and that matters. “Latasha Harlins / Accused of stealing some juice” is so stark, so restrained, and that restraint makes the loss even heavier.
Sarah
Sheila, your poem resonates with me deeply. It opens with a question that immediately invites me to reflect and respond. The way you move from that invitation to the very real people who have faced harsh, even tragic consequences because of collective inaction is powerful.
It made me think about how easily we can become desensitized to things that should shock us. I don’t mean that as a judgment of anyone; it’s just an observation about how human beings sometimes cope with overwhelming realities. Your poem brings that pattern into the light with clarity and compassion. Thank you!
Sheila, you have distilled what sounds like a powerful book into these short haiku. “How can you sit there?” is a great start, and that last line is haunting and so sadly true.
Sheila,
I know I’m repeating myself, but I highly recommend Simon’s slow reads. He’s a great guide and gathers a thoughtful community of readers. He restarts War and Peace and the Wolf Hall trilogy each year for year-long reads, but also has some that are three months long throughout the year.
Your haikus bring me right back to the tumult and stun of
I love how you start with an outraged call to action, call our attention to heart-breaking details— killed for juice!?! How can that be?—and end with a sad indictment.
Your words ring out so strong, Sheila:
Thank you for calling us to witness the deaths of Eddie Lee and Latasha Harlins.
Your last line is in close conversation with the writing of several of us today; Anita, Leilya, Bryan and I all have similar statements or questions today. It’s a hard truth that we are not learning from our country’s racist and violent past—and present.
I’m glad we’re writing in community.
Thanks so much, Sarah, for providing us this lovely space to write in community. Thanks so much to each of you for writing and commenting.
I met with my in-person Writing Club this morning and even though it wasn’t my turn to bring a prompt, my friends kindly agreed to write to my prompt for Ethical ELA. I wrote about Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a beautiful novel that I read earlier this year and am still thinking about. There’s so much more to say about Desai’s novel, but I’ve got a busy day, so I’ll share the ones I wrote in writing club this morning and plan to circle back when I have more time.
————————————————————————
The Loneliness of Sonia
and Sunny, twenty years of
writing, rewriting
Kiran Desai gives
us two decades of wisdom
on loneliness, love
room in long novel
for digressions on art, food
textures of our lives
“Mexican breakfast
can set you up for the life
beyond this one”—yes!
so hard to be both
Indian, American
belonging nowhere?
Sunny prays without
religion, but with intent
full concentration
“He asks that quiet
of this place at this moment
always stay with him”
“anonymous brown man
of no importance” he thinks
“nothing…rattle[s] him”
Sonia writes of Goa’s
kebabs, her father’s so proud
shows another side
“When one’s perspective
[is] askew, one behave[s] in
manner that[‘s] askew”
class differences
so great it’s impossible
story behind and…
—————————————————————
My poems, my gratitude for my writing groups including each of you, and a picture of my wet bike which I rode in the rain to Writing Club on my blog, Pedaling Poet.
I’m jealous you have a writing club! And now I have another book to add to my TBR list. I’m intrigued by the little taste your poem gives me.
Oh, how fun and wonderful to see another poem by you and to hear of your lovely writing group. And this book. I must read. In your poem today, the way you move between reflection and quotation feels like thinking alongside the text rather than summarizing it. Lines like “room in long novel / for digressions on art, food” capture that expansiveness so well, where life’s textures become part of the meaning.
Love it,
Sarah
I want to come be in your writing group! Oh, what a beautiful way to gather and share the power of the pen.
Oh. Sharon, how great to see you writing with us today. I, too, write with everyone else on my day of hosting. It brings me closer to people in this community. You gave me a new book suggestion and some lines to sit with tonight:, e.g., these:
”When one’s perspective
[is] askew, one behave[s] in
manner that[‘s] askew”
Thank you again for hosting and inspiration.
What a revealing thing to do! It made me see so much more from my book. I chose this one because of the poetic rhythm and learning about Indian culture. Thanks, Sharon.
From The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
wide awake, real life
yet brittle with exhaustion
trembling hand holding
red plastic glasses
toy wristwatch with painted time
the world tinted pink
calf muscles hardened
skin like hairy cannonballs
hurried with his mind
bottomless feeling
a sweet fix lemon drink
his face a shadow
a whiff of scandal
involving sex and a death
sinister voices
reveled in a curtain
“going to come and say hello?”
comfort in darkness
vegetables half cut
desolate incomplete fruit
pickled hands were washed
things can change daily
termites on their way to work
a snakeskin crumbled
free to drift slowly
flip over, begin to swim
rise from the river
Oh Susan,
You’ve captured the lushness and heartbreak of The God of Small Things.
This one especially moves me:
I heard Arundhati Roy on a podcast yesterday about her most recent book, a memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me. It was so interesting to hear her speak about how she writes and her life with a difficult mother. She is so humble. Here’s the podcast, Talk Easy.
Thank you for the podcast connection.
Ooh! I love how your haiku emphasize details that I missed as I was gobbling the book. These images are powerful.
Susan, What stays with me is “vegetables half cut / desolate incomplete fruit,” that sense of interruption, of life paused mid-action. It carries a quiet unease, like something has shifted beneath the surface. And then “termites on their way to work” alongside “a snakeskin crumbled” brings in that subtle, creeping change, the ordinary and the ominous existing side by side. And “rise from the river.” Wow.
Sarah
This is a running joke with my kids and me, lest you think it’s too dark, and my oldest daughter told me about the meme. 🤣
J.B.
Mistress of murder!
(And, yet, I wonder sometimes):
A brilliant teacher.
Heartwarming hometown
(How could there be so many?)
By a placid sea.
Jet-setting writer
(Death follows her like a pup):
Wish I had her life.
No crime she can’t solve
(Because her hands are dirty)
No criminal safe.
And just when I thought
(That she was done with her spree) —
lo! There in the library,
She sits, smiling from
(Oh God, please, no more carnage)
The page of a book.
So sweet, and who knew
(That crafty little devil)
That she lives on in lit.
The meme. 😀
Oh, this is so fun and funny! I loved the playfulness. I will never look at Angela Lansbury the same way again.
Wendy,
Thanks for sharing the meme and your clever poems. I love that this is a running joke with your kids.
I remember watching this show with my family growing up. I have to agree with this one:
Ooh . . . so Angela Lansbury is kind of like Batman . . .? I love “No crime she can’t solve/ (Because her hands are dirty).”
Oh, Wendy. I’m smiling at “Death follows her like a pup,” such a playful way to capture that strange charm where danger and coziness live side by side. And, yes, it is dark. The parenthetical voice adds a wonderful second layer, especially in “(Oh God, please, no more carnage),” where the speaker’s awareness peeks through and gives the poem its humor and personality. Less dark in that way. It feels like reading alongside someone who both admires and questions. Winking at the reader.
Sarah
Murder She Wrote: my cringey, guilty pleasure!
Ha! I knew just who this was referring to given that my aging mother watches it at least a few times a month. “How could there be so many?” Indeed!
Wendy, you had to much fun with this one! I love second lines in parenthesis letting us into your/speakers reactions. My favorite haiku stanza is this one:
“No crime she can’t solve
(Because her hands are dirty)
No criminal safe.”
What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
I have always loved
libraries. Curious Goerge was
my first of many.
“As long as you continue to say the words ‘one day’, the dream is not over.”
Mama said, “For safe
keeping.” One day has become
twenty-two thousand.
“Things don’t always go to plan. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening.”
Leaving the convent
In the quiet of our hearts
God always listens.
“This didn’t just come to you. It happened because you did something for yourself. You took action and that caused things to change around you.”
Last night’s phone call … soon
the Academy will be
Pray without ceasing.
Cayetana,
Isn’t What You Are Looking for Is in the Library such a comforting and wholesome book?
I love how you weave in the quotes from the book with your haiku.
I find this pairing especially beautiful:
Another book on my TBR list . . . I’m intrigued to read it even MORE because of these haiku!
I’m really moved by “One day has become / twenty-two thousand,” how a simple phrase stretches into a lifetime. It holds both tenderness and a quiet reckoning with time passing. The weaving of your own lines with the novel’s words creates a conversation across experience. “Mama said, ‘For safe / keeping.’” carries such care, and then it opens into something larger about what we hold onto, and why.
Peace,
Sarah
Sharon, your reading and “haikuing” of War in Peace in inspirational on so many levels in this era when we seesaw between war and peace as concepts and reality every minute of every day. Your connection to your daily life and your world in “out riding my bike altered traffic signs show me my neighbors agree” are the kinds of interjections that make me wonder if we live, as people have always lived, in a world where power and prestige are more important than our roots and beliefs? I have recently read incredible, motivating books like Theo of Golden and other books that leave me shaking my head with questions and contradictions, where authors appear to disavow their current actions and words with stories about their roots and beliefs,like in Hillbilly Elegy,
“I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.” J.D Vance (James Bowman)
You made it to the
Inner circle access where
Every decision
Could be questioned, why?
Yet you sell out beliefs for
Power, prestige, wealth?
You question those who
Talk of peace, making a world
Safer, better, more peaceful?
Deny roots, the gift
Education, prejudice,
Hopelessness? create
Incongruity
Abandonment, falsehoods,
Inconsistency?
Why cant we learn that
People will lie, deceive for
Moments of glory?
Sharon, wow, your mentor haiku today illustrate all the ways to approach this. Perfect examples of all you mentioned…summary of readings, connections to life and art. No wonder this has been a passion project. That last haiku, TRUTH! My grandson is my passion project this week, so I have another busy day. He stopped long enough from our school playing to read this book with me. He pointed to the trucks and helped me when I had trouble. He’s waiting (patiently?) now for me to post this.
First 100 Trucks
He used to read it to me.
Now, he’s the teacher.
What a fun haiku, especially with the picture.Tell him he’s a good teacher!
Denise,
Happy that you get to be the student today. Enjoy your lessons on trucks and all the other wisdom we can gain when spending time with a young family member.
Awwww! How nice of your grandson to help you with the words!
Denise,
Oh, passion project. Love that, and the reading experiences it can bring that made this poem possible. I can feel the love in the encounter “now, he’s the teacher” and that is a gentle turning of attention that holds tenderness and touch of pride that you see it, that you are the witness to this shift. Joy. And within these lines is also the value of reciprocity, a shared becoming.
Sarah
Denise, this is a wonderful passion project. It is a great book; however, I really enjoyed Cars and Trucks and Things That Go and Little Blue Truck, both on repeat!
One day he will be grown and have this haiku in a frame with the picture. Such a precious memory!
Oh, so sweet, Denise! I am happy for you–it is so great to spend time with grandkids. Reading together and talking about books sounds amazing. Love it that he is teaching you about these trucks. Reminds me of my grandchildren And he is so patient letting you to write and post. Precious!
Ahhhh, I’m so glad you were able to post this while your grandson waited. l love the shift in your poem and the photo is lovely. I am in love with your second line. Gorgeous!
Denise,
”Now he’s the teacher”! What a marvelous full-circle image of a growing reader.
This is a really cool way to reflect on reading in a succinct way. Thanks for the prompt!
Influencers lead
secret lives in Yesteryear.
Twists and turns abound.
Thanks for your review. I just heard of this book and put the ebook on hold- the library has 53 copies and I am #455 on the hold list! A movie is being made with Anne Hathaway- I will read the book first, it’s always better.
Aggie,
I am intrigued!
Tank you for a book suggestion. I haven’t heard about this one yet. Twists and turns are my favorite in the plot development.
Project Hail Mary-
It’s good enough to read twice.
Rocky, please don’t die.
“Rocky, please don’t die.” Amazing. I’ve read it twice too – the movie does a decent job but the book is still better!!
I have the book on hold at my library- 82 copies and I am #826! I’ve heard only good comments about it.
Rachel,
So good to see you here! Thanks for joining in! I enjoyed the movie and your review is making me think I should read the book since
Rocky was such a good character.
Great last line
One of my students was just praising this book!
“Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.” Thanks for crafting and sharing this, Rachel!
Rachel, I heard about it, but now that you say it’s worth to read twice, I am adding it to my TBR list. Thank you for that last line!
The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Pride and Prejudice were my inspiration for my haiku chain.
Rereading a book
Discovering something new
Savoring the words
“Stay gold Ponyboy.”
Heartfelt advice for a friend
to hold onto light
A father’s wisdom:
“Remember it’s a sin to
kill a mockingbird.”
A single, rich man
“…must be in want of a wife”
isn’t always truth
The classics hold such truths and you captured them Japanese-style via haikus. The Outsiders remains in my YA literature course…the appeal to kids remains true today.
Melissa,
Love how you pull out the truths and untruths from these classics.
That phrase still gets me: “Stay gold Ponyboy.”
Thanks for transporting me back to these old friends.
Melissa, there are some of my favorites, too! Thanks for honoring them.
Melissa, you chose the timeless books. Love how you represented each. Also like to revisit my favorites from time to time, so I can relate to discovering something new every time. Thank you.
Sharon . . . how i wish I was still in the classroom as this type of writing really distills ideas down to the key points, just as the haibun did. I love how you tie this writing into people’s current reading. I just chose to take a global look at my reading habits.
Brain and Heart Food
My reading habits
ebb and flow over the years.
I change and they change.
Sometimes I want escape.
Others I want to learn things
or feel connected.
While teaching, I read
almost all YA books
to relate to kids.
Fantasy is not
my vibe, but they are the rave.
I prefer real life.
I found my sweet spot
with historical fiction–
transported in time.
Memoir opens a door
into the lives of gamechangers–
growing empathy.
Listening these days
has become my preference.
“reading” while doing.
Other people’s work
touches my heart and my soul–
expanding my mind.
~Susan Ahlbrand
21 April 2026
Susan, I love historical fiction too. I have not yet accustomed to listening or reading on-line partly because of my hearing disability. Wish I could read while doing.
It’s almost like I wrote this poem. You captured how I feel and what I usually read.
Thank you! Historical fiction is my favorite for the exact reason you gave.
Susan,
Yes, I’ve also thought this school year, my first year of retirement, about how much fun it would be to have students writing haiku about what they’ve learned, but if I were still teaching I wouldn’t have so much time and energy to write my own haikus which is awfully fun.
I love how you’ve providing a whole history of your reading life in haiku. And that last haiku—wow! What a good tribute to how reading enriches our lives.
Susan, our reading preferences are so similar. I love “reading” while doing, especially since my ability to focus on the printed word is still problematic for me right now. Your last haiku is perfect.
Susan, I loved this walk through your reading history!
Susan, we seem to have more in common that writing poetry. I am not a huge fan of fantasy, too, but historical fiction attracts and teaches me. Love your final stanza:
“Other people’s work
touches my heart and my soul–
expanding my mind.”
Thank you for your prompt and inspiration.
I chose a favorite scene from Theo of Golden by Allen Levi.
Ellen comes to church
Wants to walk in with her bike
Loud chaos ensues
A calm voice is heard
Ms. Ovid says sit with me
Hear the stones dropping
In Theo of Golden I also love the vibrant images of The South. Here is a cento with lines from the book:
The South
Southern dawn- world of warmth
Abloom in myriad shades of green, yellow, lavender and pink
Ocean of dogwood blooms and azaleas
Pollen settled like a lemon patina on every exposed surface
A very pleasant place to be
Shadows of evening feather soft
River meandering, flowing
Ribbon of fog above the water
Scarred trees haunting reminders of grim moments and dark stains of history
Diane,
There is so much beauty in both your haiku and your cento.
As I cyclist who has occasionally tried to bring my bike in where it wasn’t welcome you’ve piqued my curiosity. Adding this book which others here have also recommended to my holds list.
Love the calm after the chaos:
I can just see these two scenes and sense the power of Ms. Ovid to take charge and offer calm and acceptance. Okay, I really want to read this book now.
Diane, Theo of Golden was one of my favorite reads this year. I loved the church scene with Ellen, and you captured it so well in such a small space.
Diane, beautiful imagery and scene setting. This made me want to read this!
Sharon! What a fun way to appreciate a book as you are reading it. I immediately changed my bellwork for today since students finished reading Their Eyes Were Watching God. I decided to write my haiku over that novel as well — I pulled lines directly from the last chapter:
Her love like the sea
to the horizon and back
she called in her soul.
I might write more haiku later, but I wanted to go ahead and get this one out there.
Beautiful haiku! I can relate to it so well. I live by the ocean and it calls me daily.
Erica,
Your haiku is stunning!
And brings back all the strong emotions I had when reading about Janie and Tea Cake. Thank you!
Love your haiku version of Zora Neale, one of my favorite writers to ever breathe. “Her love like the sea” is such a powerful and evocative line
I love how you’ve lifted language from the text and let it breathe in haiku form. “she called in her soul” feels like a quiet culmination, inward and powerful at once, capturing that sense of self-realization without needing to explain it.
Love this!
Erica, I love that you “immediately changed [your] bellwork” because of the prompt! And your haiku is wonderful!
Sharon! I love your poem so much—the way you capture how when we read we’re putting the text in conversation with other texts and our lives. I’m having a hard time stealing minutes today so just decided to write a quick haiku capturing the book that has stuck with me the longest and what comes to mind when I think of it.
Harriet the Spy
Don’t write in private
what you wouldn’t say out loud
if you want more friends.
What a perfect haiku for Harriet the Spy! Also, very wise advice…
A good review for Harriet. My daughter lived her… but sadly from the movie, not the book.
Thanks, Kate.
Your haiku made me smile. I can just see Harriet—and the many young readers who emulated her—learning this lesson the hard way.
Ha ha, perfect
I’m smiling at “Don’t write in private / what you wouldn’t say out loud,” that line carrying both mischief and wisdom, exactly the kind of truth that lingers long after reading Harriet the Spy.
I loved Harriet! Thanks for sharing this haiku. After reading Harriet the Spy, I carried a little notebook around and wrote my observations about the neighbors…until my mom found out and put a stop to it.
Waterworld, the film,
horrid at the box office
worse in my basement
______________________
Epic of Gilgamesh
This flood myth predates
the Bible and foreshadows
my failing sump pump.
_____________________
As a young poet
I’m in my blue period
(or maybe that’s gray).
___________________________________________
Thank you, Sharon, for your plentiful prompt and your War and Peace haiku! I love how you’re condensing the text and connecting it to your life as you slowly process Tolstoy’s massive tome. This sounds like a great (and rather daunting, lol) “passion project for the year.”
Those sump pumps certainly can cause problems of epic proportions! I enjoyed your humor in your haikus today.
I’m guessing, Scott, you are flooded. Been there, done that…but I didn’t approach them with witty, brilliant haikus. So clever. I smiled. And I wish I could help…sump pump blues are for real, for real.
Scott,
So sorry about your flooding, but I love the flood (couldn’t resist) of haikus it has brought us.
Love the watery connections you’ve made.
The shift into “This flood myth predates / the Bible” is such a clever leap, especially when it resolves into “my failing sump pump.” That juxtaposition between ancient epic and everyday frustration feels both playful and smart, letting history echo in the present in unexpected ways. And how the flood. More for your chapbook on water in the basement.
Scott, you really are in the midst of a diluvian dilemma. I appreciate that you can craft such witty poems in the face of a very unfunny situation. (I almost feel bad for laughing at the Waterworld haiku!)
thank you Sharon for the cool prompt. I decided to use a song I listen to at least once a month. ” What it’s like” by Everlast. This has been my all time favorite since Everlast released it. This song puts in a nutshell how people perceive others and how we look back at our own lives and see the highlights. Everlast died for a few seconds prior to the release of this song, so I believe his life is symbolized in the song as well. I also, listen to the song to understand how it is to actually walk in other people’s shoes.
thanks……
EVERLAST
Wave goodbye, to die,
Grave too high, open wings, to fly,
Save a sigh, to lie.
Rich man, does not know,
Witch woman, which way to go?
The Snitch, the say-so.
What is it like, then?
All the places you have been,
Die and live again?
Then you really might,
Internalize what it’s like?
To live and to fight.
Home is less, not right,
Phones confess a wrongful sight,
Bones rest, song sealed tight.
Our future, to lose,
Mothers understand to choose,
wear another’s shoes.
Beggar becomes rich,
Sinner and a good man switch,
green puffs of fine stench.
Song to symbolize,
What I have come to realize,
People die, songs strive.
_ Boxer
I love the unexpectedness of “grave too high.” That opening stanza’s imagery really transports.
Boxer,
Just listening to “What it’s Like” after reading your haiku.
I love how you capture its richness and love your mission:
Yes to more listening and considering and less judging!
Thanks for introducing me to a new-to-me artist and for your compassionate haiku.
“Wave goodbye, to die,” opens with such a strong sonic pull—the rhyme and repetition create a chant-like rhythm that carries through the whole poem.I’m especially taken by “Rich man, does not know, / Witch woman, which way to go?” where sound play and meaning braid together, almost blurring certainty and confusion in the same breath.
I hear so many favorites in here – the Eagles, Witchy Woman, and of course I’m humming Puff the Magic Dragon…..love all the nods to the great songs of our time.
First of all, thanks for taking on the big issues, a big author, a big book, and thanks for bringing it home to neighbors, to our choices, to Lou F7cking Reed. And for resolving with the brave question that needs asking and answering.
Lately I introduced my students to Brian Doyle’s Joyas Voladoras, which was my inspiration, including a line I’ve quoted — we all churn inside. He wrote a short “epiphany” once a week for years. As always, I post what I write here. Today’s offering is a tribute to and a quoting from his essay:
Joyas Voladoras
Hummingbird. English
name, American by birth.
They are flying jewels
in Spanish, a name
for eyes not ears, for motion —
bird watching for real.
Their hearts miniscule,
An infant’s fingernail big.
Just 2,000,000 beats
is all that we have
to spend. Bacteria, worms,
tortoises, salmon,
butterflies, blue whales
all have chambers of some kind —
we all churn inside.
Blood pressure is good.
Deep red fluid rhythm through
each blessed bejeweled day.
Joel, I appreciate the narrative explaining your process and connection. Your last stanza/haiku stands out with imagery–pumping of blood without stating. Thank you for sharing today.
Joel, your haikus condense beautiful, bright imagery that pays homage to this essay. I introduced it to my students, but unfortunately, they weren’t as excited about it as I was. Your haikus remind us how much a heart can hold.
Some the name flying jewels makes the hummingbird even more precious – grateful for each blessed bejeweled day. Lovely!
Stunning. Seriously stunning.
and love the humor in the last stanza…turning it to yourself. Wish I could say the same about my blood pressure…but hummingbirds help.
oh, my blood pressure needs work — but a beating heart beats the alternative : )
Joel,
Thanks for your kind words, your shared appreciation of Lou Reed, and for introducing me to Bryan Doyle’s beautiful writing.
I’m especially moved by:
Joel. Lovely. Where I paused to savor and contemplate was here: “Just 2,000,000 beats / is all that we have / to spend.” That line lands with a soft kind of urgency. It doesn’t rush, but it makes time feel visible, counted, shared across species that have fewer beats even. And then the widening in “we all churn inside” feels like the emotional center of the poem, where difference collapses into shared biology, shared movement, shared vulnerability. Reminds me of “Startlement” by Ada Limon, which I read today.
Sarah
Good Morning, Sharon. I always recall the year I only wrote in haiku – result of a Fulbright Memorial Scholarship to Japan! Was cause for assigning epic haikus (7 or more haiku stanzas on any subject). Thrilled to reflect on Ibram X. Kendi’s Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age with your morning invitation. I can connect the two reads with a line from your writing:
While Reading Kendi
b.r.crandall
ten links for our time
chaining ideas together
in a racist world:
flip the shit around
anti-anti-racism
make it about them
tell false histories
linked by self-preservation…
…ideologies…
rich men in board rooms
orchestrating bogus news,
claiming they’re oppressed.
international
reversal of narratives –
core to bigger plans.
human animals
trapped by vast oligarchies,
a powerful design.
modern KKK
with great replacement theory
(swastika tea parties)
maskless truck convoys,
vaccine discriminations
speeding their white lies
ideas pulverized,
insurrections go free.
such democracy.
is it biology?
these authoritarians
claiming such power
a need to resist
these sheep-wolf dictatorships
reclaiming freedom
finding integrity…
our humanity, linked with
togetherness – the we.
Bryan, your haiku-Japan trip and scholarship sound fabulous. I recently had a pre-service Social Studies student observed a haiku battle in a high school classroom, teaching about the Japanese internment camps. I was so excited to hear this!
Your use of anti-anti is so strong in purpose and repetition. Your ending “the we” is also spreading a lot of hope today.
I love all of this. I think my favorite line is “anti-anti-racism
make it about them:
Bryan,
A year of writing only in haiku in Japan! Sounds amazing.
Thank you for turning us to Kendi as a way to learn.
These are chilling:
Thank you for reflecting both the terribleness of our country and the hope:
Oh, dear Bryan. I’m struck by the opening move, “ten links for our time / chaining ideas together,” where the poem already names its own structure and urgency, as if thinking itself is being forged in real time. Wow. The repetition of “linked” and “reversal of narratives” builds a pressure, each haiku tightening the focus on how stories are constructed, distorted, and circulated. There’s a strong sense here of language as contested space and even of biology, a nature that we hope isn’t shared, the kind that harms when we need to heal. Maybe some cannot be linked into the healing we.
Sarah
Bryan, I’m applauding the anti-anti-racism and the claim of such power – – and let’s be real. Isn’t power just an inflated construct? I mean, when it comes down to it, your last stanza says it all – – humanity! Without the we, there is nothing.
It’s hard to read this. I don’t want it to be true…but Kendi is brave to bluntly write what needs to be read. These haiku are tough, like his text…but they pair really well.
Thanks for the prompt, Sharon. I’m working with students right now who are writing their haiku reviews of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Here is my haiku review of Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet
in fair verona
a feud, two families, and
star-crossed lovers wait
to rosalind
he swore his love until he
met fair juliet
palm to palm—the sin
exchanged. fate—children in love
with families’ hate
garden wall, love’s wings
o’er perch—an offered rose
hands touch, wedding plans
lovers united
a fight in the streets. two die.
her love is banished
to mantua, he
flees. parents command for her to
wed. she pretends death.
wedding feast, funeral meats
parents, lovers, nurse bereft.
she with tybalt lies
her tomb—to mourn, to
die. they meet, cry, fight. one stands,
paris at his feet
she sleeps—not dead, not
gone. my heart—one kiss, one drink
forever my love
a friar’s call; she
wakes. where’s love? where’s light? he’s dead.
cold poison stops life
a happy dagger—
lover’s heart pierced. are they at
last together? dead?
parents cry, lament:
cold statues replace children?
lover’s tale of woe
Melanie, cool idea about the haiku review. Your line “cold statues replace children,” is dark and perfect. Thank you for sharing today.
Thank you!
Wow! What a great opportunity for your students, and you set a marvelous example for them with your haiku review.
Thank you! I love how well poetry and songs work with Shakespeare!
Beautiful review of Romeo and Juliet and each stanza hit the right plot beats!
Thank you! I love pairing poetry with Shakeseare.
This is great. And I start R&J with my class next week, we may do this. Or at least read yours! thanks!
Use this however you need to if it will help! Want other poetry/R & J stuff? Email me if you do.
I hope you share this with your students. This is a wonderful poem. Thank you for sharing.
I have a Macbeth one that I am using but now I also have a Romeo and Juliet one!
Melanie,
I love that you are writing haiku with your students today.
Your haiku bring the whole play back to life for me.
My favorites:
Your haiku capture the emotional sweep.
Thank you! When I do this with students we break the play into significant moments that need to be remembered (they do it as groups) and then key phrases from lines they might want to incorporate. Then they pick a theme and then…write. The counting of syllables is a delight to watch!
Melanie. I’m struck by how steadily this moves through the arc, almost like watching the entire tragedy held in a series of breath-sized reckonings. The opening—“a feud, two families, and / star-crossed lovers wait”—already carries that suspended inevitability, as if the ending is present from the start. You know this arc so well.
Sarah
It feels as though I have taught it a million times–to middle school, to high school, to college, and to preservice.
Melanie, such a wonderful Romeo and Juliet-ku. I know students would love this, and wouldn’t it be great to have them add to it in book sections? Oh, the possibilities of this haiku inspiration today are running with promise, and you show how this can be such a relevant creative writing activity in your amazing verse.
What a great re-telling!
Thank you for this prompt, Sharon! (I absolutely love the name of your blog.) Your prompt today brought to mind all the book characters who have been friends of mine. In response, I wrote haikus for a few of them. First, I must recognize kind-hearted Fern from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Next, I pay homage to Beverly Cleary’s characters from her beloved Ramona Quimby books. As an older sister, I related most to Beezus. Finally, I couldn’t write about friends from books without including Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables (by Lucy Maud Montgomery).
True Friends from Fiction
Fern rescued the runt,
spent hours in Zuckerman’s barn…
Wilbur’s friend, and mine.
Beezus and Henry
Ramona, too. Oh to live
on Klickitat Street!
Sweet Anne with an E…
Can characters be kindred
spirits? Yes, they can!
Lori, thank you for the trip down memory lane. I think it might be time to revisit Anne Shirley.
I also love Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon trilogy.
Pure joy, Lori. Pure joy.
Lori, your question about characters being kindred spirits would be a great literary critique for many books and authors–how does one write to make this true!? Thank you for sharing.
I’ve loved every one of these books, too. And I love your poems!
This is such a beautiful poem filled with tributes to beloved characters from your childhood (and mine). Thank you for sharing this with us.
These are a few of my favorites! I still cry when I think of Charlotte’s Web!
Lori,
Fellow kindred spirit here. I’ve also been friends with each of these characters, but Anne with an E has been the most steadfast!
I concur wholeheartedly.
Thank you for the swell of feelings your haiku brought in being reunited with old friends.
Lori, I love how quickly you open into care with “Fern rescued the runt,” where friendship begins as attention, then action, then devotion. It already sets a moral tone—tender, unshowy, deeply attentive. The shift into “Wilbur’s friend, and mine” is especially beautiful. That small bridge collapses the distance between reader and character, as if companionship in fiction is not imagined but genuinely shared.
Sarah
Such a trip down memory lane in verse! What a treat!
Lori, the name of my book club: The Kindred Spirits. Oh, how this makes my heart swell with joy for all the love of reading and the beloved characters that keep us coming back to turn page after page after page. This is a jewel of a poem.
More haiku that makes my reader-heart happy. LOVE this!
Thanks for bringing some cherished reading memories to the forefront of my mind today!
What a fun prompt, Sharon! I thoroughly enjoyed this and may write all my book reviews in haiku from now on. My favorite recent read is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans! My poem contains little spoilers so be aware!
“You get the one life
it’s awfully unfair
isn’t it?”
she told him to jump
(partial attentive parenting)
felt pain daily, since
both needed a temple
to tuck away and mourn in —
did the best they could
it was not enough
but is it ever enough???
life is messy.
packing lunches I
ask: will this be enough food?
We will make do.
Sybil tucked into
her stationary and spread
so much light
when she lost her sight
the light came back to her in
full glory: friendship
Write the letter
say the words you wish you could
it’s hard, but try
Beautiful Rachel! I loved the Correspondent and appreciate your clever haiku rendition of the book. Bravo!
What a great way to process the book and get others thinking about what they’ve read! I’ve appreciate this nudge to see more clearly how for Sybil letter writing was both balm and great effort, was in all ways salvation.
This was one of my favorite books I’ve read recently. Your haiku review is perfect!
You certainly captured the heart of The Correspondent, one of my favorite books.
I recently read this book, too. Your poem is a love letter (poem) to Sybil.
Oh Rachel,
Your haiku are so beautiful and wise. I read The Correspondents last year and enjoyed being reconnected with Sybil through your haiku.
Your last three haiku really tug at my heart:
Sybil tucked into
her stationary and spread
so much light
when she lost her sight
the light came back to her in
full glory: friendship
Write the letter
say the words you wish you could
it’s hard, but try
Sign me up for your haiku book reviews, please!
One of my fave books I’ve read. Loved it.
I really love the rhythm of
Wow…Sharon I am impressed by your passion project which you’ve you seem to be mastering. I like the way you zigzag from Tolstoy to Gaza…Haiku is hard for me but hope this one passes. Just saw the Raphael Museum exhibit at the Met and started reading his biography. Haiku always makes me step outside the line…
Rare favors and gifts
blessed Raphael Sanzio
in art and nature.
A gentle child,
both charismatic and kind,
beloved by all—
except Michelangelo.
Stepping outside the haiku line, with that last turn, is what makes this poem land!
Ann,
I agree with Kate.
Well-played.
Now I’m going to have to learn more about Raphael and Michelangelo.
“Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008”
New Jersey basements
Emotional core, front porch
punks, skinheads, tough guys
walking down the hatch
stairs leading into the hot
sweaty mass of kids
Rites of Spring, Embrace,
Saves The Day, Thursday,
Movielife, Lifetime,
Silent Majority,
The Get Up Kids
It’s okay to cry
and to be pissed. Catharsis.
taking the reins from
pioneers that came
before. Making the art they
wanted to. paving
the way for later
commercialization and
tokenism. All
capitalistic.
Not until a bit later,
1999.
Wow! I had to look up several things to understand the references (love that!) because I am not familiar. I love the deeply connected discussions of music embedded in this history/explanation. The critique in the last two stanzas is fantastic.
Love this, Luke, but also pictured PBS’s ELMO because I misread the book title. Now I want to unleash Emo Elmos across the nation. You nailed a movement and a time (a core-decade of my teaching life)
The Oral History of Elmo’s Minstream Explosion. My students in SRT just asked me why I laughed so hard out of nowhere.
Ha. This made me laugh, too!
Luke,
Thanks for schooling us in emo history.
I love how one haiku flows into the other. Form reflecting the influence of
perhaps?
Hi Sharon, thank you for hosting today. I like the new take on writing a haiku and all the options for content that you included. Wow, I had no idea War and Peace was that many chapters. Whoa. Makes me wonder how much I would remember by the end of the year. Haiku documentation is really smart. You’ve given me an idea for novels I read in the future. Currently I’m not reading anything because life is hectic at the moment. However, I chose two books to write about today. One everyone knows about and I think the other is lesser known but one I really recommend everyone to read.
Liesel, a German,
was a stand over girl for
Max, a Jewish man
Basement friendship found
all valuable things in
common: trains, dreams, fists
–Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Soot saw a planet,
an onyx planet the same
color of his skin
An answer that said
here you can love not hate the
color of your skin
–Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
These novels move me
even though I’m not Jewish
or Black; just human
I love these Angie and especially like how your added commentary which I so wish the world could understand…
I am, because we are. Ubuntu (from a project last summer with immigrant- and refugee-background youth. They read. They collaged. They spoke. They shared. And wola! They were surprised when their thinking all came together to spell one word.
Fabulous! I love it!
I bet every kid and adult remembers this. The power of being seen as individuals and as community. Lovely.
Angie, your poem so eloquently speaks to the fact that because we are all human, we should not move books out of the hands of kids that speak to experiences that may be different than ours. Yes, we should be reading them! (And I need to add Mott’s book to my TBR stack – your haiku is beautiful.
Angie,
Thanks for bringing me back to the heart of The Book Thief.
You’re the second person in a week to recommend Jason Mott. Guess I better get on it.
Thanks for your beautiful conclusion. So amazing how literature can bring us together.
These novels move me
even though I’m not Jewish
or Black; just human
Angie, I fell in love with The Book Thief – the written version and the Audible version, and it gets my vote for my all time favorite narrator ever of any book on Audible. And of course, with Death as the actual narrator, that was very unique. Yes, I cried. I have not read the other book ,but I’m adding it to my looonnnnnnggggg list of want-to-reads. There is much to be said for the human heart in books – – we are all members of the human family.
Sharon, thank you for this prompt today and for the reminder that we all need a slow read every now and then.
Reading Haikus
Jo writes at her desk,
Bats away sisterly-doubts
As ink stains fingers.
Centuries later,
I see myself in each page
While on the school bus,
My hand ink and graphite
Stained from spinning stories
In class instead of
Minding my math. Now,
As I look through my New England
Window, I long to
Find those pages, those
Ink-stained hands, knock away my
Own doubt, find her again.
Oh, you have expressed my own desire to always want to go back and see what I wrote in adolescence. I love the images of the bus, in class, the ink stains.
Jordon, I identitied with Jo writing away at her desk. I remember the intensity of that writing, the ink and graphite stained hands…spinning stories/in class instead of/Minding my math…I’m still trim to knock away my doubts…you’ve captured it all— thank you!
I love the repetition of ink stains and doubt–the connection across time and text is so well done.
This is wonderful, and I appreciated stanza one (haiku one) the most…so rich. Brilliantly crafted.
I love this call to Jo and to your past writerly self! I love rediscovering old writings and thinking of the person I was back then. A lovely collection of haiku you have here.
Ooooh Jordan,
Such yearning! Such beauty!
Looks like she’s here.
Sharon, what an amazing and challenging project you have taken on! I can only imagine how writing haiku must use a different part of your brain and help with comprehension. This idea would be a great way to do a novel study.
I am currently reading Theo of Golden. It’s become the book I read when I can’t sleep. Stealing some words from Allen Levi, I wrote a haiku that speaks to my current emotions. I am trying hard to keep them “in check” as the anniversary of my father’s death approaches.
Through my sleeplessness
gravity of rivers flow
hidden life below.
Margaret, I loved Theo of Golden. I understand trying to keep emotions “in check.” My husband passed away almost seven months ago. We never know what is hidden beneath those we meet. I wish you a peaceful day on your father’s anniversary.
I’m glad the book is comforting and cathartic for you. This is a great haiku to express your emotions as you approach the anniversary. Virtual hugs 🫂.
This is beautiful Margaret, capturing so simply the hidden gravity of grief. Perfectly said. I wish you peace.
So beautiful… the rivers and their hidden life is such a meaningful description for grief.
Margaret,
This novel keeps popping up. Anita and Diane have also written about it today.
I love your intriguing phrase:
I’m going to hold that with me for a while.
Great book and powerful images depicted by your image of the river with so many stories to tell. I found some peace in the image of the bench by the river where healing might be possible from the ravages of life. I hope you find some peace by the river during this hard season.
“gravity of rivers flow”
My goodness…that’s it right there. Beautifully written.
So beautiful, Margaret – and haunting, My copy of ToG arrived today. I cannot wait to start it. Thinking of you as the anniversary comes around. I so know the bracing.
Sharon. The connections you make in this haiku chain are amazing! Loved your poem so much. ❤️❤️ Also, I’m retiring next year, and your current life sounds like a dream to me; I feel like we’d be friends if we lived near each other. 😀Love your passion project about War and Peace and your terrific prompts! Be back later to write.
Thanks, Wendy! You’re going to love retirement. If you’re ever in Austin…
Sharon, thank you for hosting today. I recently finished The Correspondent, which often reminded me of my Mimi’s letters she wrote into her nineties. I still have many of these letters she sent to my children and me.
cursive correspon-se
curved letters in letters, send
penned paper mem-ry
Stefani, I love how you gave yourself permission to play with letters and sounds in this beautiful haiku. I’ve just started a correspondence with my grandson. He’s seven and is now a writer. He wrote me a thank you note and asked me to write back. He misspelled thank as think, so I wrote him a “Think you note.” Love “penned paper mem-ry”.
Stephani,
This so touches my heart. Your poem makes me see my grandmother’s handwriting. She, too, was a good letter writer.
Love your word play that lets us see your Mimi’s handwriting.
Lovely!
Sharon, thank you for this clever use of a haiku. It may turn up in my plans before the end of the school year. My haikus are from My Brother Sam is Dead by James and Lincoln Collier, which was the last novel my entire 7th-grade class read.
MBSD
Father against son
Neighbors against neighbors
A revolution
Brothers, Tim and Sam
Loyalist or Patriot?
How do they decide?
I read My Brother Sam is Dead years ago. Thanks for the reminder of this book. “How do they decide?” Captures a theme of the novel.
Oh, Rita! This sounds likea back cover blurb or the lead in to a book trailer. Wonderful way to capture the essence of MBSD!
Rita,
I hope some haiku do sneak their way into your lesson plans.
Love your use of questions.
Loyalist or Patriot?
How do they decide?
Rita, this is a great haiku showcasing that same old division of families, communities, societies from wars. When will we decide to focus on solving problems peacefully?
Oh, I love that book…do middle school readers still read it? I hope so. Thanks for the memory.
Rita, so fitting a resurgence for beginning our 250th anniversary of the revolution! Your lines address the the cost to families, divided.. .then again in the Civil War… to heated divisions now…the tempest is always brewing, alarmingly.
Sharon, thank you for hosting today and inspiring haiku writing ~ a favorite, and I love that you re writing War and Peace in haiku! I joined the Simon group, but I fell too far behind to catch up. Maybe in 2027…..thanks again for all the daily inspiration from your amazing blog, too. Your background is my favorite color, and the typeface is perfect.
In the Name of Book Club
Fourth Wing fantasy~
not my genre, but I did
it for my book club!
Ha! Love it. My friend hung in there for my choice of The Antidote. I now owe her a schmaltzy romance. What a gem of description.
Haha I don’t think I could ever get through that kind of book, although I don’t believe in not reading books for book club! 🙂
Kim, great haiku! This is one of those love it or leave it book series. However, if you remove the “romance” from the novel, there is a lot worth reading – she’s a great story crafter (much better than the Twilight series that was the previous rage).
The things we read for our book clubs! This haiku captures the joy and connections of reading with others. I resonated with it so much.
Laughing…the ‘not my genre,’ but you had that cup of tea, anyway. Been there, done that. Congratulations for making it through.
Kim,
Thanks for your kind words about my blog. It is an inviting place for me to write, reminding me of my Dad’s typewriter which I used to write on as a kid.
Thanks for your funny and relatable haiku. I just laughed out loud.
not my genre, but I did
it for my book club!
I hope you’ll share with your book club.
Kim, this is really powerful respect for your reading buddies! I am not really a fan of fantasy and really did not love Harry Potter, but I really do love sharing and talking about all books, including fantasy. I have added a few books to my list based on posts today!
Oh, Kim, I hear you. Fantasy is not quite my kind of reading, but I was patiently guiding my student’s MA thesis research, which focused on three fantasy novels.
Kim, I love fantasy, but not all is to my liking, for sure. Not naming any famous quintessential fantasies.. ahem. That you plowed on for the sake of your book club speaks to your dedication! Caring enough to make the sacrifice.
Kim, I think your poem most likely resonates for any person involved in a book club. I just recently finished this audiobook. Some of the scenes were….hmmmmm…..quite intimate. I was thinking this was a YA book, but I’m not sure I’d suggest it for my granddaughters.
Sharon, thank you for this rich prompt… I hope to do better justice to it in the future. I am thinking how much students might revel in this as way to retell/show learning…in short: Your haiku and the whole concept are awe-inspiring, blending literature, history, and the present time. Thank you for this.
I hope my counts are right ha – here goes:
The Hero of My Reading Program
The children’s top pick
of my book collection is…
wait for it… Dog Man
“Please let me come read
with you today,” they all say
from third down to K
Many volunteers
get a kick out of the books;
others detest them
Confession: I thought
the series was just silly
potty jokes galore
until I noticed
the characterizations…
Big Jim, pure of heart
Faithful L’il Petey,
always believing the best
in spite of the worst
His Papa, Petey,
a hater transformed by love
in spite of himself
Evil Doctor Scum,
screaming for recognition,
being forgotten
And 80-HD,
robot friend whose hero-cape
(as Supa Buddy)
bears logo “LD”
meant to stand for “Lightning Dude”
(but what do YOU see
there in those labels,
80-HD and LD?
Yes, they are a key
to understanding
the author and survival,
for he remembers
what it was like to
be thrown out of class each day
for “misbehaving”
And so, in the hall,
he passed the time by writing
comic strips until
one teacher ripped them
to bits and trashed them,
saying “You’ll never
make a living by
writing comic books.” Young Dav
has the last laugh now.
Three cheers for Dog Man
who overcomes all the odds
(he will make you laugh)
and for the author,
for if you pay attention,
you’ll discover gems:
Parodied titles
such as The Scarlet Shedder
and Mothering Heights
and lyrics: Philly,
don’t be a gyro, don’t be
a fool with your life!
Or, in the middle
of Cat Kid Comic Club, whoa—
such stunning haiku.
Thanks, Mr. Pilkey,
for all the inherent stuff
of life in Dog Man.
Oh, do you make my school librarian heart sing! May I share this with students? I love it…and so will they. All the Dog Man books are still super popular with the 6-8 crowd.
Yes you may share, Linda – delighted you would like to do so! I forgot the closing parenthesis after LD:
(but what do YOU see
there in those labels,
80-HD and LD?
I can’t edit now so please just remove the first one in your copy <3
My grandson is into Dog Man these days. Thanks for giving me the low down and helping me see these books are actually good for kids. I like to believe any reading is better than no reading, but Mr. Pilkey has cornered a popular market for boys, for sure.
Fran, you made Dog Man sound pretty attractive. I like that “Young Dav has the last laugh now,” which proves the cautionary tail of underestimating someone every time. I have to check with my grandkids if they are reading (or read it by now). Thank you for bringing it to us in haikus 🙂
Fran, I can sense the depth of love these students have to these relatable characters and how, in the end, a kid writing comics wins the day – – and the hearts of children and teachers alike. My grandchildren love Dog Man, and you give us the reminder that the heart of the reader must be watered to bloom. And Dav does that, and so do you!
Fran, I have to admit that I’ve never read a Dog Man book (lower elem than what I teach) but know of Pilkey’s story and admire the slapback he’s achieved. Finding out all the nods he’s delivered, the structure of the novel, the use of form, that you’ve shared in your poem makes me admire him all the more (and makes me want to read a few). If only the haters would take the time to read before hating.
Oh, this made my heart sing! Books that touch readers! Such power. Then the stanza about the harm that teachers can do if they are not careful with their students. So powerful. I absolutely love this poem so much!
I sure hope you find a way to share this with Dav Pilkey, Fran. And I also hope you share with the kids, inviting them to write haiku-reviews of his books (and others). This was a delightful read keeping me from tackling the numerous academic agenda items that lie ahead. Thank you.
I doubted Dog Man before I knew the author’s story… and before I saw how it turned my great-nephew into a REAL reader!
Thanks for this poem- I imagine Dav Pilkey would love it! Teachers and parents who doubt that “potty humor” should read it, too.
Fran,
Thanks for your kind words.
And for your epic haiku which had me on the edge of my seat when I got to the terrible tearing of comics.
I love that you’ve found such a strong way to connect with your students. Love that you value both their love of the humor and the deeper meanings hidden within.
Good for Dav and good for you!
Fran, this post is a gift that I will share with my own children who have boys wedded to Dog Man and Cat Kid. I have been a fan of Pilkey’s gifts of words and hidden meanings since the mid 80s when I me young Dave at a NYS Reading Conference and he signed his first book, World War Won about feuding sides building increasing weapon with plans to wipe out the other! It describes our world now and it was published as “Student Writer of the Year” or something like that! Your words need to be on every library wall. I mean it!
Fran, what a delightful analysis of Dog Man’s characters. I had no idea about the background information which makes your poem even more interesting. I can see why kids would request this book be read based on your poem’s details. I’ll have to read one soon. Delightful poem!
Good Morning! Ooh, your retirement activities sound absolutely perfect. Birding and poetry? Yes, please. I’m impressed with your Tolstoy project. What a great way to careful read. You give me all kinds of good ideas.
I’ve been having fun writing haiku sonnets these days. I think I heard of the form here at Ethical ELA.
write haiku about what you’re reading.
found in a thrift shop
someone’s well-read poetry
perfect condition
no clues left as to
which verse was a favorite,
softly read aloud
weekend evenings are
made for such bedtime reading
page turns as slow and
steady as a heart
beat resting on a pillow.
just one last poem now
before switching off the light
turning in for perfect sleep.
Linda, I could feel the softness of those well-read pages. Your poem has me rethinking my bedtime routine. Tonight, I think I will carry a book of poetry up to bed.
“steady as a heart
beat resting on a pillow.”
These are my favorite lines.
I love “page turns slow and steady as a heart.” You are making haiku sonnets as smooth as your haibun from a few years ago. Thanks for this wonderful model.
Linda, oh the treasures of thrifting and poeming – – they make good bedfellows at the end of the day. I love the lines
steady as a heart
beat resting on a pillow…..
poetry is medicinal in this way, and you show us!
Linda, some of my favorite books are from my grandmother where she marked the poems she most loved or added notes. I treasure that connection. The blend of form of a haiku sonnet makes the sonnet feel more accessible, and I can see this as a stepping stone for students. I love the slow turning pages like the heart beat resting on a pillow. Nighttime reading feels llike that. Thank you for slowing my pulse rate a bit as I wander through your words.
I love that thrifted someone else’s “well-read poetry” in perfect condition. Such join, especially with a head upon the evening pillow.
Linda,
What a beautiful haiku sonnet. Tough form and you pulled it off so well!
I love you take pleasure in both the reading of the poetry and in imaging the earlier reader.
Reading your haiku sonnet, I feel so cozy and calm. Thank you.
Ah, what stories these thrift store finds might tell — I note perfect twice, with “condition” and “sleep.” Such peace emanates from your verse, Linda. I can almost hear the pages of that little volume rustling. The form flows like a dream.
Sharon, recapping in short and sweet summaries is always more challenging than unlimited word counts (and more fun!). I can imagine the challenge of placing such a long novel into such a short poetry form. I appreciate your mesh with present times – why aren’t we learning indeed. I chose a short story from Ray Bradbury.
The Veldt
A future warning
The nursery brings to life
Children’s tech gone wild
What a great choice! I’m discovering Ray Bradbury as an adult. The contrast between nursery and tech gone wild makes me want to know more!
Intriguing haiku. I need to look up this short story.
Thank you, Jennifer! You left us with the hook–what happens after tech goes wild? Ray Bradbury could prosper today with his futuristic ideas.
These authors of short stories were prophetic in their future visions of what technology would do to us, weren’t they? The Fun they Had (Asimov) and others simply saw something in the shadows and warned us. But we didn’t listen. Love your nod to Bradbury and the short story, Jennifer!
Linda,
Thanks for reminding me of great discussions I used to have with my eighth graders about this story.
Indeed!
Ooops. I meant Jennifer! Sorry.