Monday, June 10, 2013

Essential Question: What is poetry?

I. Do Now: Describe, in writing, some quintessential natural spring occurrence in your experience.  

For example: The apple tree close to my back door is filled with blossoms. There is a bush outside our picture window that bursts with yellow blossoms and within a few days loses them. The asparagus tips emerge from a sunny spot in the garden.

1. Read: Haiku and Tanka. Read through the poetry as a whole group. Compose your own haiku using the above models. You should begin with the image that wrote about for the do-now. After you have done this, think of some spring or summer images. Try  to create other haiku, tanka, and naga-uta.

haiku: a seventeen syllable poem of three lines (five-seven-five)

tanka: a five-line poem, of which the first and the third lines have five syllables each and the others seven, making a total of thirty one syllables per poem.

naga-uta: long song, 5-7-5-7-5-7-7 (43 syllables or more).

On the first day of spring,

snow falling

from one bough to another

                                         Virginia Brady Young

Snowing...

the dentist

polishes my teeth 

                            Robert Speiss

Yukaze ya                        evening breeze...

mizu aosagi no                  water laps the legs

nagio o utsu                      of the blue heron

                                                   Yosa Buson (1716-1784)

Yanagi chiri                       willow leaves fallen

shimizu kare ishi                clear water flowing

tokoro-dokoro                    one place and another

Tanka 

at the roadside

clear water flowing

willow shade

thinking to rest awhile

have come to a halt

                              Saigyo (1118-1190)

Oh, don’t swat!

the fly rubs hands

rubs feet

                           Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826)

stuck in a vase

clusters of wisteria

blossoms hanging,

in the sick-bed

spring begins to darken

                                    Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902)

Modern haiku sometimes ignores the 17 syllable form. It is described as a “bumpy” form.

recently wife died

grocer’s 

stacking greens

stacking onions

husband and daughter

                                     Kawahigashi Hekigoto (1873-1937)

Contemporary haiku:

the flavor

of the salt-pickled daikon

the moon and I

                            Fujimoto Kanseki

buzz

slap 

buzz

        Alan Pizzarelli

a tooth of gold

going out of the dentist’s office

the leaves fall