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2 July 2004. Today, I was going to finish my re-display of the old haiku I got published in the seventies. As I scrolled down through them, though, I
passed one about a hedge whose berries were "shining." A few poems later I hit the following haiku from January 1978:
November rain;
among dead maple leaves
a candy wrapper shines
Can't have that, I thought, and changed the text to:
November rain;
among dead maple leaves
a candy wrapper's glint
Kids, if you don't see that I should have made that change even if I'd never used "shine" or "shining" in any other haiku, you gots a lot to learn about haiku. One of my better solitextual haiku, I think--same theme as the red kite one, but not quite as large or active.
Having cheated once, I touched up another candy wrapper haiku, this one in a slightly more substantial way (by switching lines, and adding a couple of words):
candy wrappers
in late November rain;
unfamiliar brandnames
October 1978
late November rain;
the scattered candy wrappers'
unfamiliar brandnames
I wouldn't swear my changes in this one were for the best, but for some reason I thought they were worth making. After that, I went to town, but only on two other specimens:
quiet evening snow
slowly fills the dark gaps between
the old pier's planks
October 1976
bridge-view
of a night snowing together
an old pier's planks
just left of the falls--
a dragonfly's disturbance
of a small dark pool
April 1976
just left of the falls--
a dragonfly briefly disturbs
a little dark water
My changes to the pier haiku were not new, but in line with my original version of the poem, which my editor had me revise (and I do revise for editors, but unrevise when I can later if not satisfied with the revision, which isn't too often the case, as I'm fairly flexible in such matters. I did have "quiet" in my original version--but snow is always quite, isn't it? "Snowing together" was in the original; it was, in fact, the heart of the poem for me (which, by the way, was based on another True Life Experience; circa 1965, a freeway bridge over the Norwalk River near the Norwalk, Connecticut, city dump. . . ) I consider this haiku one of my few major ones.
I like the last one above, too, though not as much. My changes seem to me minor, but "a little dark water" uncliches "a small dark pool," I feel.
Tomorrow, more haiku. Right now, I don't have any urge to do any more revising, but who knows how I'll feel then.
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