05-27-2015, 11:50 PM
Hi AJ, thanks for taking the time to read and comment on this, it's good to see you on the site again.
I hear what you're saying about certain aspects of the piece. It was originally just a prose piece, so exactly as it is now but without the haiku, but I've also had it in my mind for a while that it had some potential to be a haibun. I've also had the image of the first haiku for a while, probably before I wrote the prose piece. The crutches on the frozen canal were something I actually saw this winter just past, one morning on my way to work and it is indeed a bizarre image but it was real. I can however understand how it would come as a surprise in this piece and I suppose the fact that I saw it enabled me to take the 'bizarre junk' aspect of the piece to a ridiculous extreme.
Of the very little that I know about 'haibun', the one thing I do remember reading was to use the haiku to take the piece in a different direction or to resolve it in an unexpected way and I have found that hard to do in the past because the obvious temptation, without even realising, is to have a haiku that is a commentary on the prose and basically says the same thing but in a slightly more poetic way. So I made extra effort here not to do the same, but I understand that perhaps I went to far.
I also think that you are right about the personification of junk at the end, it seemed to work fine when it was just prose but the haibun conversion has made it seem less appropriate and I will think of a way to either make it work as personification or to change it into something different.
I'm pleased you like the last haiku, I was worried that it was perhaps too much of a gimmick to use here so I feel better about it now.
Thanks for all your comments, they've been very helpful to me,
Mark
I hear what you're saying about certain aspects of the piece. It was originally just a prose piece, so exactly as it is now but without the haiku, but I've also had it in my mind for a while that it had some potential to be a haibun. I've also had the image of the first haiku for a while, probably before I wrote the prose piece. The crutches on the frozen canal were something I actually saw this winter just past, one morning on my way to work and it is indeed a bizarre image but it was real. I can however understand how it would come as a surprise in this piece and I suppose the fact that I saw it enabled me to take the 'bizarre junk' aspect of the piece to a ridiculous extreme.
Of the very little that I know about 'haibun', the one thing I do remember reading was to use the haiku to take the piece in a different direction or to resolve it in an unexpected way and I have found that hard to do in the past because the obvious temptation, without even realising, is to have a haiku that is a commentary on the prose and basically says the same thing but in a slightly more poetic way. So I made extra effort here not to do the same, but I understand that perhaps I went to far.
I also think that you are right about the personification of junk at the end, it seemed to work fine when it was just prose but the haibun conversion has made it seem less appropriate and I will think of a way to either make it work as personification or to change it into something different.
I'm pleased you like the last haiku, I was worried that it was perhaps too much of a gimmick to use here so I feel better about it now.
Thanks for all your comments, they've been very helpful to me,
Mark
wae aye man ye radgie