Haiku-ing

Haiku! Bless you.
I like to use Haiku as an exercise to flex my creative writing muscles. In the past I've simply picked a random photo from Google images and written a nice Haiku about it. This time I'm going to add a twist to it. My recent post comparing poetry to abstract art got me thinking, there's very little left to the imagination in my poetry and it's always bothered me. My poems are nice and sweet, but in the art world very representational and straightforward. In other words, my trees look exactly like trees. I need to think outside the box a little more, pour more of myself, my point of view, and my interpretation into it.

Below is my inspirational photo, it's of a windmill from the 1890's near Long Island, NY. My challenge today is to first write one of my "normal" Haiku poems. Then I must write another, more abstract Haiku that captures the essence and mood of the photo.

-- If you want to play along, scroll only to the bottom edge of the photo - don't look at my poems or you may be influenced by them. Reminder: Haiku consists of three lines, the syllables of which must be 5, 7, and 5 - in that order. -- Ready, set, go!

Haiku #1
windmill frozen still
grainy shades of black and gray
window to the past

Grade: C-
makes sense, sounds nice, but bland and boring, no emotion, feeling, or originality (I'm beginning to understand why my writing has been referred to as "banal") You could read this poem on its own and come up with an image very similar to the photo it's based upon.

Haiku #2
quietly the blades
stall in shadows to affront
storms of rain and time

Grade: B-
interesting, moody, somewhat original, evocative, with duplicitous meaning. An all-around decent poem.

I'm generally not in favor of grading or rating poems and still believe you should write in a way that pleases you. I only did this exercise to try to push myself to do something different and go beyond the normal and predictable.