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Rev 3, Done.
Spring fog hovers
halfway up trees that
hide crows playing
marco polo
Revision 2
Warm fog holds to trees,
as crows call out marco polo.
Revision 1
Fog hovers half up the trees,
crows play marco polo through the leaves.
Soft earthsmell from warming ground rises,
life comes again from fall.
(original)
Soft fog holds to trees,
crows call out marco polo
warming ground wakens.
[normally I dislike haiku as much as okra. This stuck in my head. Feel free to go after with wild abandon, it was a quick write]
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Had you not made mention of 'haiku' I would have just treated as a short poem in the short poem forum. Having said that now I see the adherence to 5-7-5 and because of that the last line feels forced and not very natural. Not sure also of how fog holds to trees and I live in Scotland so I know all about every kind of fog.
The second line is excellent so with that in mind and the fact that you don't like haiku then scrap the haiku and go for the image. A suggestion would be
fog -
crows call out
marco polo
Cheers for the read,
Mark
 wae aye man ye radgie
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(02-21-2016, 08:32 PM)aschueler Wrote: Soft fog holds to trees, Fog being fog, soft is unneeded. "holds to trees" sounds like an awkward compression of what you really meant to say here, but it has some value.
crows call out marco polo Good line. I disagree with breaking this line for the sake of the poem because it'd make the poem hang too much on a personification, but since the next line gives almost-nothing...
warming ground wakens.Like I said, this line gives almost-nothing. Because I know very little about the nature over there, I can't tell if the appearance of fog and the fooling around of crows signals morning (or, er, spring), so I can't be sure if the thought in "wakens" is necessary or not.
This is very close to something suck-worthy, especially with that middle line, but yeah, there are too many words, and the sense of time and place still feels incomplete, especially with me forgetting how much of a season "crows" and "fog" denote.
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Yeah, I figured as much.
It started as different, but as I ran into trouble as I shaved and shaved I thought "why not" and indeed the last line is a sickly compromise.
Ambrosia Mark... I was amused by " I live in Scotland so I know all about every kind of fog"; I would love to come visit some day, my Wife has been pestering about a trip mostly Ireland and Scotland for some time. I am scared I will like it and not want to leave. Anyway, she also thinks she knows all about fog being from San Francisco (see Carol Sandburg); this fog is however indeed different. I thought I had a picture I had taken and was going to post it, but no. Maybe later. Anyway, think tropic/subtropic, then rainforest.
And the word soft was there for syllable content, so I suck at haiku. Fine.
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ELH is just artificial bullshit to begin with. In Japanese it serves a function as it grew organically from the language, just as iambic tetrameter in the form of "Ballad Meter" did in English. The form in no way enhances the language. As was pointed out, you were forced to add a third line to make it be a haiku, but it makes for a worse poem.
Where I live "grips" would be a better description of what fog does to trees, plus it gets you away from "holds on to". Of course if you really wanted to personify "fog", you could say it "fingers trees", but you may not want the sexual innuendo So jumping on the bandwagon (not saying this is better, but to give you something to think about and reject):
Fog grips (sylvan) trees,
crow's caw echos:
marco---polo.
sylvan in this sense just means inhabited, inhabited by the fog and by the crows and maybe by tree spirits. Just a thought.
dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
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(02-22-2016, 12:44 AM)Erthona Wrote: ELH is just artificial bullshit to begin with. In Japanese it serves a function as it grew organically from the language, just as iambic tetrameter in the form of "Ballad Meter" did in English. The form in no way enhances the language. As was pointed out, you were forced to add a third line to make it be a haiku, but it makes for a worse poem.
Where I live "grips" would be a better description of what fog does to trees, plus it gets you away from "holds on to". Of course if you really wanted to personify "fog", you could say it "fingers trees", but you may not want the sexual innuendo 
Splintery innuendo.
Sometimes I remember some of the Latin I took ways back and think how much easier poety must have been when there was a set number of endings of nouns etc (-a. -ae -orum) you get the picture. Not fair. Interesting how the rules of language change forms.
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(02-21-2016, 08:32 PM)aschueler Wrote: Revision (actually more the original)
Fog hovers half up the trees,
crows play marco polo through the leaves.
Soft earthsmell from warming ground rises,
life comes again from fall.
(original)
Soft fog holds to trees,
crows call out marco polo
warming ground wakens.
I was surprised to see how much in the opposite direction you went from the original idea of haiku. To be honest if I had to choose between the two I would choose the original. Mostly because that wonderful middle line of the original seems to be lost now. And by lost I don't just mean the change of 'call out' to 'play', but the other lines around it seem to smother it. Perhaps RiverNotch was right in not breaking up that line, but either split in two or still as a whole line, it is too good of a line to not use as a shining centrepiece for some sort of short poem whether it be haiku, senryu or just a short poem without restrictions.
It's up to you, but I wouldn't say it if I didn't think that line was worth saving.
Mark
wae aye man ye radgie
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(02-22-2016, 06:56 AM)ambrosial revelation Wrote: (02-21-2016, 08:32 PM)aschueler Wrote: Revision (actually more the original)
Fog hovers half up the trees,
crows play marco polo through the leaves.
Soft earthsmell from warming ground rises,
life comes again from fall.
(original)
Soft fog holds to trees,
crows call out marco polo
warming ground wakens.
I was surprised to see how much in the opposite direction you went from the original idea of haiku. To be honest if I had to choose between the two I would choose the original. Mostly because that wonderful middle line of the original seems to be lost now. And by lost I don't just mean the change of 'call out' to 'play', but the other lines around it seem to smother it. Perhaps RiverNotch was right in not breaking up that line, but either split in two or still as a whole line, it is too good of a line to not use as a shining centrepiece for some sort of short poem whether it be haiku, senryu or just a short poem without restrictions.
It's up to you, but I wouldn't say it if I didn't think that line was worth saving.
Mark
yeah, you see what I ran into when I was shaving stuff off. There was more.
Will do my final revision (appended). Thanks for the help.
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