4 SUMMER HAIKU – Poems From Maureen Mitchell

Editor’s note:

The NESTER has previously featured Maureen’s wonderful photographs of Maui and the Cascades. In this post you will be delighted to  reflect over Maureen’s 4 summer Haiku.  About her interest in writing Haiku, Maureen tells us, “I’ve always been attracted to this form and enjoy the mental challenge of working with the five, seven, five syllable structure.”  She adds “I love nature and Haiku are traditionally meant to evoke the natural world so that’s another reason I’m drawn to this form of poetry.”

The Editor’s Note to THE FOUR SEASONS, a book of Japanese Haiku, provides an excellent introduction to Haiku. The Japanese created the Haiku format over three hundred years ago and it is popular throughout the world. “The Haiku does not make a complete poem in our usual sense; it is a lightly-sketched picture the reader is expected to fill in from his own memories. Often there are two pictures, and the reader is expected to  respond with heightened awareness of the mystical relationship between non-related subjects.”

“Almost every haiku holds a season key word; often the name of the season itself, otherwise a seasonal reference that is easily understood. The reader must take this key word not as a statement, but as the author’s cue to him, so that he can call upon himself his own associations and nostalgias, and read the little poem against this background.”

You can read more Haiku in Lorelie’s post, WATER MOODS II.