Category Archives: Poetry

How the Haiku Can Help: A Simple Structure with Powerful Potency

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Photo by nicollazzi xiong from Pexels

In a recent post, I offered 25 quotes on creativity to, hopefully, create a shift in thinking for all you creative souls who are feeling the call and are also feeling stuck.

Now, in this post, I want to offer a more specific and very simple practice with the potential to make big changes in your beautiful creative brain.

The haiku.

We probably all learned the simple, precise structure of the haiku in grade school, so maybe that’s why many disregard its power.

Three lines
1st line – 7 syllables
2nd line – 5 syllables
3rd line – 7 syllables

Here’s one of my favorite originals.

No, I can’t date you
I am an English teacher
And you don’t spell well

So… when you’re feeling stuck, even thought the impulse to create is alive and well, try using this simple structure to give form and power to your thoughts and feelings.

You never know what else might follow…

 

“I guess haiku is an inspiration for me. Everyday, simple moments.”
― Misha Collins

 

We create our own inspiration.

Please leave your creations in the comments below.
I’d love to know about your simple moments.

I Go Back to May 1937 – Sharon Olds

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I ADORE this poem by Sharon Olds. I adore it so much, I used parts of in my first film, I’m Too Much (2004).

It’s a lovely reminder that no matter what we endure in life, we have the power to transform – ourselves and other people – with our words.

Sharing our stories is what heals us.

________________________________

I Go Back to May 1937

BY SHARON OLDS
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
______________
What story will you tell?