Artwiculate - some of my tweets (2)

^  thanks to @StarofSavannah for creating this picture of Ludovic

 

Artwiculate is a Twitter-based word game. Each day a new word is published, all the tweets with that word appear on the Artwiculate site, and can be voted on. Here are some more of my efforts :

"misnomer" (wrongly-named) :

The "Unsinkable" Titanic gloated at high speed over the Atlantic until her misnomer was corrected by an iceberg

Guy walks into a bar and injures his head. It was actually a steel girder . #misnomer

Shooting stars are a misnomer : they are not stars, nor do they carry guns 

I am what I am ~ not your sculptured misnomer ~ and I will survive . #haiku #GloriaGaynor #ElizaDoolittle

"indubitably" (undoubtedly):

"Holmes, I deduce that right now, Mrs Hudson is downstairs preparing a tray of tea for us" "Indubitably, Watson - it is 3:55pm"

indubitably : a short step from the Penumbra of Uncertainty into the sunlight of "Yes" .

stardust within me ~ lights my way to who I am ~ indubitably . #haiku #artwiculate

When the heart reaches higher ground & stands awed at life's new sunlit vistas, we indubitably feel that eternity is here, now

"pandiculation" (stretch & yawn):

prison pandiculation : a long stretch

When we're apart my arms stretch out / And weep at empty air / Pandiculation, in my heart / Love smiles - I find you there

"odalisque" (harem virgin):

Just be yourself - ask nothing, love, from me / And then your willing odalisque I'll be

The vanquished night, the eastern sky, a pale gold nascent disk / A new day dawns & I'm still here: Light's passionate odalisque

"surreptitiously" (furtively, with stealth):

On the eastern horizon, a rosy glow surreptitiously transforms grey to gold, a diurnal alchemy heralding the coming of the light

You phoned me repetitiously

And love-bombed me capriciously

Stole my heart surreptitiously

You're now my life, deliciously

tiptoe through my life ~ surreptitiously hoping ~ someone notices . #haiku

"gesticulate" :

Guy walks into a bar and orders a Gesticulate. Barman: "That's two fingers of Scotch, and one finger of dry ginger, right?"

The sun & rain in harmony gesticulate their adoration of this bejewelled Earth, and a rainbow is their love child.

Gesticulate : the early worm flips the bird.

I gesticulate ~ not waving but drowning ~ no-one sees . #haiku

"odious" (hateful) :

His poems were poor, his odes odious, his verse even worse

Guy walks into a bar & orders an Odious. Barman: "Beer topped up with creme-de-menthe, Coke, & Cherry soda, yes?" #NowIFeelSick

odious to part ~ our symbiosis wreckage ~ weep for lost love . #haiku

Odious - the new cologne for ex-boyfriends : "Because You're Not Worth It"

 

"symbiosis" (lifeforms joined in mutual dependancy) :

Waves die on the shore, caressing the sand which hugs them gently as they slide back into the vast ocean; symbiosis of land & sea

You and I, arm in arm, heart to heart, soul to soul. 1 + 1 = 1. Symbiosis.

music needs silence ~ sound born in space, returns home ~ symbiosis art . #haiku

Artwiculate - some of my tweets (1)

Artwiculate is a Twitter-based word game. Each day a new word is published, all the tweets with that word appear on the Artwiculate site, and can be voted on. I've been playing for 3 months, and these are some of my own efforts :

"Oneiric" (dreamlike) :

I pass through the mirror into an oneiric landscape: I walk under a green sky, on clouds lit by a billion stars beneath my feet

oneiric lives ~ terrestrial wanderers ~ chasing the dawn . #haiku

Oneiric is as oneiric.. melts the faces of time over washing lines into a metamorphosis of fish, strangeness and charm . #Dali

"Penchant" (taste for):

a cold wind blows from hell, and zombies with a penchant for beautiful thoughts are eating my brains . #cookery #eatingout

If this was the last day of your life, my friend - tell me, wouldn't you have a penchant for what each second brought you?

Oh hold me tight! Caress my penchant for you until passion's flame ignites, & we'll come to rest at last in love's afterglow. 

penchant for living ~ savouring each breath he takes ~ condemned man's last hour . #haiku

"Flibbertigibbet" (flighty - especially a young woman):

flibbertigibbet ~ flighty there, but never here ~ butterfly life  . #haiku

"Why, Mr Darcy, do you think me such a flibbertigibbet as unable to comprehend that we two inhabit a best-selling novel?"

"Brogue" (type of shoe; dialect):

Brogue - walk the talk?  

"Fungible" (interchangeable):

human beings ~ stardust, golden, unique ~ never fungible . #haiku

"Languor" (languid, listless, dreamy):

In languor deep we lay

As sun announced the day

Exhausted from the fray

Of night-long passion's play

No dragons more to slay

our anger spent ~ exhausted from the fray ~ yield to languor . #haiku

"Holy doze Batman! It's.. The Languor!" "I'm ready, Robin - coffee, amphetamine, Jane Fonda video.. I'll just take a nap first"

"Parsimonious" (stingy, mean):

Otto the odious octopus was extremely parsimonious: he'd give with one hand, and take with seven

"Yesternight":

Yesterme, yesteryou, yesternight, yesterlove . #artwiculate #StevieWonder

Sir Lancelot got Guinevere, Sir Galahad got the Grail, Sir Yesternight got to do all the washing up & cleaning

Dracula bows ~ fantasy in black velvet ~ yesternight . #haiku

Yesternight we kissed ~ scents on the breeze of today ~ love's open window . #haiku

Guy walks into a bar and orders a Yesternight. Barman: "We don't open until 6PM yesterday evening - come back then"

How many syllables should be in a haiku?

"Easy - it's 17 syllables (5-7-5), everyone knows that!" Well, in Japanese, that is perfectly correct. Haiku is one of their principal literary forms, even more so than - say - the sonnet is in English. Many writers of haiku in English therefore believe this discipline translates directly, and that a true haiku in English must also be 17 syllables, arranged in 3 lines, 5-7-5.

But consider this (one of the earliest Japanese haiku) :

fu-ru i-ke ya ~ ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu ~ mi-zu no o-to

It doesn't need a knowledge of Japanese to realise that those "syllables" (they are actually called "onji") are of almost equal length. Therefore the metre of a Japanese haiku flows naturally.

Now look at this, in English :

strength is pitiful ~ if not married to wisdom ~ a thought for today

This is the 5-7-5 syllables of a Japanese haiku, but it has a different feel. Disregarding the content for the moment, the sound and flow is not the same. 'Strength' takes as long to say as the three syllables of 'pitiful', and likewise 'thought' is another weighty syllable. Unless uniformly short syllables are chosen (which would be artificial), it is impossible to re-create the metrical sound, flow and feel of a Japanese haiku in English.

On its own, this does not matter too much. English can certainly "adopt" the metrical discipline from another cultural form, and use it to create its own versions. But then there is the issue of content. Returning to the Japanese haiku above, its direct translation into English is : 

old pond - frogs jumped in - sound of water

Which is a syllable count of 2-3-4. In fact, Japanese "onji" say less than English syllables, and therefore the Japanese haiku - 5-7-5 - nearly always translates into English as something rather smaller. The haiku is truly succinct, far more so than the 5-7-5 micro-poems they've become in English.

What do we conclude from all this? First, it is not possible to convey the Japanese metre of a haiku in English, unless almost by accident. Second, a true haiku uses fewer images, and more succinctly, than its 5-7-5 English equivalent. There is absolutely no reason why English should not attempt the discipline of writing micro-poetry that incidentally employs the 5-7-5 count of Japanese haiku, but whatever you end up with, they are not real haiku.

Writing English haiku should be perfectly possible, but to capture the spirit of the Japanese form, fewer syllables and fewer images should be used. What is the ideal? Very difficult to say - each poem should be taken on its own merits; however, anything from the 2-3-4 of the frog poem above, to perhaps 4-6-4.

A lot more could be said about the haiku : the difference between haiku and senryu; the need for a 'seasonal' reference; the 'twist' or 'contrast' of two ideas, images, or concepts. But for now, I wanted to address the "hot potato" of the syllable count, a source of controversy and disagreement.