Common Scents, by Steve Hluchan

Poetry Niche

HAIKU

A haiku is a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of nature intuitively linked to the human condition. The term haiku is credited to Japanese poet and literary critic Masaoka Shiki, who lived in the late Meiji period (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Most haiku in English consist of three unrhymed lines of seventeen or fewer syllables. In Japanese a typical haiku has seventeen on (sounds) arranged five, seven, and five. Traditional Japanese haiku include a kigo, a word or phrase that helps identify the season and a kireji, a sort of spoken punctuation that gives emphasis to one part of the poem. One common technique is juxtaposing two images or ideas (Japanese rensô). Most haiku have no titles, and metaphors and similes are commonly avoided.

Here is an example by Yuko Shimizu from his 2021 publication, Sotogawa no Watashi (My External Self), 2021. like releasing the hand of one’s partner

Spring departs

The implication is that these hands are those of two lovers, though it is also possible to interpret them as the hands of a mother and child. We see and feel those hands letting go. Only with the next phrase do we realize that the poem is not about the hands. This technique of beginning a haiku with one image and then pivoting and turning that image into another is a common technique. When spring finally leaves and summer replaces it, we know that it is inevitable so are able to let go. There is a feeling of pathos in this haiku as we superimpose such feelings towards spring onto the relationship between the two hand holders.

SENRYU

A senryu is a poem, structurally similar to haiku, that highlights the foibles of human nature, usually in a humorous or satiric way. . The senryu was named for Karai Senryū, a poet who lived from 1718 to 1790, during the Edo period. Many so-called “haiku” in English are really senryu.

I am told I look young

That is how I know

I am not young anymore

To sum up, haiku describes natural nature, and senryu describes human nature.

Mel Goldberg

Common Scents

by Steve Hluchan

Artists to Nature great odes do compose, like Beethoven’s 6th, everyone knows.

I go to the kitchen look out at the trees I open the window hear birds, feel the breeze.

I sit myself down I’m spent to the scrawl. for that immortal phrase. I’ve slowed to a crawl in a Minotaur’s maze.

I break out of this maze, the immortality phase from pie-in-the -sky I resign authorship.

When a bell calls, awaking Its the timer for baking, the aroma of cookie, time to play hooky!

Dental Intermissions

by Judy Dykstra-Brown

There’s nothing quite so fundamental when it comes to matters dental as the fact that teeth gone missing mar the esthetics of kissing. It’s doubtful that a dental gap would land a lass upon the lap of any lad whose reminiscing will be done with s’s hissing. Potential lovers tend to hate suitors of the toothless state. Better they should duplicate those teeth that happened to vacate those facial places deep inside the mouths wherein they should reside.

Teeth should be natives of the jaws that reside within the maws of suitors that might deign to woo— to hug and kiss and bill and coo. In short, what lass does less than censure a suitor who forgets his denture?

zigzagged stanzas suggest missing teeth

Friends And Flowers

by Joaquin A. Hawkins

A withered bloom, a fallen petal, a bye-gone delight of luminous color, once brightly shone under Southern skies, radiant ‘neath the warming comfort of the sun’s rays.

Now its glory is dimmed by time, as seasons come, fade away, thus beckoning the chill of winter’s night, ‘til Spring ushers in a dawning new day.

Yet, I recall the infant beauty of said flower, in its youth, how it blossomed in full maturity to dazzle the eye and nose of all, with its splendor and fragrant prime.