Thursday, June 5, 2008

My haibun habit



It's been within the past year that I've been working hard to amass a respectable number of carefully crafted haibun. I define haibun as being short prose that includes a haiku that either relates directly to the prose or echoes the tone. My criticism of a lot of contemporary haibun is that the prose reads flat or merely functions as the preface to the haiku -- there's little sparkle, vim or flare to the prose.  I try to avoid that with my prose which tends toward the dark and edgy OR the surreal and ironic. In my haibun endeavor, I have been fortunate to befriend Jeffrey Woodward, who publishes Haibun Today. Jeffrey's mentoring comments have been helping me define my haibun voice. If you click through to the Haibun Today website and scroll down the right-hand side until you reach my name and then click it, you'll be able to read a number of my haibun. Here's a recently published piece:
...............

Bulging Red D-Ring Binders

Wearing bright-green Wellington-like water-proof boots and keeping a wandering steel-blue eye on the pleasing, designer-jean cheeks of the flouncy-haired blonde stepping assuredly in front of him, the esteemed balding field-science researcher clutches a soft, carmel-brown leather messenger bag with three, bulging red D-ring binders and strides confidently up the expanded jetway into the brilliant light of the arriving gate fresh from a meticulously-documented examination of the fractal-star crop circle on Silbury Hill located within a shillings throw of Wiltshire, England -- home to the Blind Bore Pub where a perfect-poured pint still waits for him in the dark-wood, dim-lit snug opposite the 18th-century massive stone fireplace.

bulky shadows
a distant siren
defines distance

...............

No comments:

Post a Comment