On a roll?

Dear readers,

I am humbled by your support. On your advice, Paige (see my followed blogs), I will undertake to challenge you with a poem type per week, should you choose to accept it. Feel free to read and not take up the gauntlet as well. Hopefully those sessions will prove enlightening for all involved. I will not pick a "winner," we are writing purely for enjoyment here.

I am struggling to move past a small roadblock encountered at the end of my MA program. I received the lowest grade of the entire program on my thesis, which I feel is unfair since I did not receive any feedback from my advisor between the penultimate and final drafts. However, it will not prevent me from graduating or even lower my GPA significantly; it's just the principle of the thing. I put an email to him tonight, we shall see if he actually answers it this time. Sigh...

Anyway, on to my first Poetry Challenge!

HAIKU

Really, what else would I start with?

Haiku had its origins in Japan. It is traditionally a three-line, seventeen-syllable poem, able to be recited in one breath. It generally depicts images from nature, and because of its brevity, it emphasizes simplicity and intensity. Haiku was traditionally written in the present tense and valued the associations between images. 

Ezra Pound was famously inspired by the haiku form, writing his poem "In a Station of the Metro" in nearly-haiku form:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough. 

You can see many example-haiku here and here. 

Here is an attempt from me.

Thunder rolling, wind

sweeps through tree branches outside.

Summer crackles, live.

What've you got? I want to read it!

Haiku News

13 years later,

Unabomber fights auction.

Victims deserve cash.

Adam Lambert's gay.

In other news, the sky is 

blue, and we breathe air.

"Futurama"'s back!

Awesome, that show makes me laugh

more than "Simpsons" does.

Fallon tries to stage

"Saved By the Bell" reunion;

Screech the holdout--why???