07-04-2021, 01:13 AM
on line one: i feel like "hawk chicks" would be punchier. "tonight" is definitely redundant.
now the rest. the progression of images is off. taken as it is, it goes from dark to light to dark to light, or smallest to biggish to biggest to small, in a seemingly undirected fashion, but that's taking the young hawks as an *image*. "cry" here connotes sound, but the rest of the poem seems to be concerned with sight. this comparison between the visual and the auditory seems to be the cut for your haiku, but it's a rather uncompelling one. the sentiment you seem to be delivering is one of abandonment. what does it say, broadening the already very deep sense of abandonment in young chicks crying for their parent? nothing.
the moon is usually a symbol of fecundity, while in a lot of myths known to the west the moon's personification or commanding goddess has a mother or a mother figure -- the image evoked by calling it "motherless" doesn't seem to exist, or at least make any sense.
young hawks crying, meanwhile, is a good image -- and i'm back to letting 'image' be more of a figure of speech -- and having a good image to portray, with a clear idea of what sentiment you want to convey, is a good amount of the work done. you just need to choose more coherent images to compare with your main image, to develop a better reason for those choices, and to provide a setting for all those images -- both the central one and its companions -- beyond your title.
haiku should stand on their own. for a set of haiku, the title should be descriptive: this set should be called the Guadalupe River haiku because they're all set near or on the Guadalupe River, and not that the set shows scenes by the Guadalupe River because the title says so. while it isn't necessary to show us directly a bit of the titular river -- if this is going to be a part of a set, then the river could instead be shown by the later members, or else the river could resolve from all the details the set explores -- there should still be a strong sense of where the central image is, or where the speaker is in relation to this image. as it stands, young hawks crying under an evening sky could be anywhere.
now the rest. the progression of images is off. taken as it is, it goes from dark to light to dark to light, or smallest to biggish to biggest to small, in a seemingly undirected fashion, but that's taking the young hawks as an *image*. "cry" here connotes sound, but the rest of the poem seems to be concerned with sight. this comparison between the visual and the auditory seems to be the cut for your haiku, but it's a rather uncompelling one. the sentiment you seem to be delivering is one of abandonment. what does it say, broadening the already very deep sense of abandonment in young chicks crying for their parent? nothing.
the moon is usually a symbol of fecundity, while in a lot of myths known to the west the moon's personification or commanding goddess has a mother or a mother figure -- the image evoked by calling it "motherless" doesn't seem to exist, or at least make any sense.
young hawks crying, meanwhile, is a good image -- and i'm back to letting 'image' be more of a figure of speech -- and having a good image to portray, with a clear idea of what sentiment you want to convey, is a good amount of the work done. you just need to choose more coherent images to compare with your main image, to develop a better reason for those choices, and to provide a setting for all those images -- both the central one and its companions -- beyond your title.
haiku should stand on their own. for a set of haiku, the title should be descriptive: this set should be called the Guadalupe River haiku because they're all set near or on the Guadalupe River, and not that the set shows scenes by the Guadalupe River because the title says so. while it isn't necessary to show us directly a bit of the titular river -- if this is going to be a part of a set, then the river could instead be shown by the later members, or else the river could resolve from all the details the set explores -- there should still be a strong sense of where the central image is, or where the speaker is in relation to this image. as it stands, young hawks crying under an evening sky could be anywhere.