Viral 4.2
Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.
• Viral 4.1 (Metz ➾ Mountain)
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Unearthing by Marlene Mountain
gothic doorway something half eaten clings to the moon
— sheila windsor
When I go to online haiku sites the first thing I notice posted are one-line haiku. Sometimes I’ll re-arrange a word or two in my head. If it seems there’s only that one haiku, I often don’t open the post. I know that it’s really a three-line haiku bunched up. For some authors I’ll click on just to see.
Of course I look at content. I look for the personal relationship between poets and their subjects. If the poet has a personal closeness, then I can get closer. Especially to a haiku that one has to want to find out what’s there. Way back in the time of The Wordless Poem (1969), Eric Amann wondered why two-line and one-line haiku were rarely written. The latter clicked with me. Yet over these forty years or so, one-line has not been taken very seriously. Some poets would give it a try, but there must be something safe or cozy about the three-line. In the late 1970s, Clarence Matsu-Allard wrote haiku one had to reach into.
Some haiku unearth one-line. Some one-line unearth content. Well, some one-line haiku unearth our minds too. The internet opened new friends with individual views. One particular poet/painter is Sheila Windsor in England.
gothic doorway something half eaten clings to the moon
Did you feel a bump in the line? What happened? If anyone knows what the haiku is and/or means please don’t tell me. I love it as is. Will it “work” as a three-line. It won’t—the marvelous bump would be lost. It’s an unearthing one-line.
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“gothic doorway” was first published in Lynx XIX:3 (October 2004)
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As featured poet, Sheila Windsor will select a poem and provide commentary for Viral 4.3.