< hot summer >

[rayheinrich]

Mostly off-topic answers to milo's questions above:

I don't want to distract from the discussion of the poem which is really what this thread should be about so if the discussion continues I will split it off to the discussion forum

I'm the person (or one of them) who loves free-ranging threads,
so either way is fine by me. Personally, I prefer a poem to be
the starting point of a discussion, not the focus. And yes, in
workshopping the poem IS the focus. So many paths...

the reason people mention the capitals and punctuation isn't because they are bothered that you don't use them, (many writers here both use them or don't use them) but that you are omitting them without reason or good effect. punctuation and capitals are tools for writers and they should be either used or omitted with the intention of producing an effect. That is my opinion on the issue anyway and i have written using punctuation, non-standard punctuation, capitals and no capitals.

I'm in agreement with you. It's important, I think, to point
out that "punctuation" consists of much more than "punctuation
marks". White space (horizontal and vertical), rhythm, thematic
content, etc., etc. ,etc. are all part of it. Eliminating
punctuation marks (and caps for that matter) is not so much a
technical constraint, as it is an esthetic decision.

Not my favourite haiku. I didn't really get a sense of the image through the language. I felt the seasons ate up too much real estate in such a concise poem but that might just be me.

Yes, it's not really a haiku. It's a fauxku or a haiku parody
or some such. It's immoral to format twelve or so syllables
into three lines and not label it "fauxku" even though
I'm pretty sure any further dilution of the term "haiku"
would not be scientifically detectable. (Still, that's no excuse.)

Also, I would almost prefer it untitled than titled after the first line. I have seen the practice before, but frequently it is used where the other lines seen in light of the umbrella of a title gain additional meaning and I didn't get that here.

Using the first line as a label (not title) is, for me,
the lesser of many other evils. I chose this particular evil to
avoid the hell of having multiple poems on the web and on my
computer labelled "untitled" or worse yet "         ". Which, by
the way, is why all my titles are bracketed with: < > . Doing
this makes it much easier to find titles and use them to
delineate poems when searching, sorting, extracting, etc.
This is especially true for ones on the web. (I used to take
them off for aesthetic reasons, but my laziness won out years ago.)