My first activity of the day, if you exclude getting both legs in my trousers and eating breakfast, which are both serious pursuits for a newly retired man, was to call up my folder of moribund haibun. These are the ones that I like, but which seem to lack the final touch. Or the ones that have been rejected several times, but which I still have faith in. Or, to be blunt – the ones that are one press of the button away from the file marked “Storage”, but which could equally be called “Elephant’s Graveyard”. I have dropped a few in there recently and am looking for more.
The one in question was, according to my cunning filing system, started in 2022. The 24th October, to be precise – I can say that with confidence because I just remembered how to find that information – perhaps I am at last becoming computer literate. It has been submitted three times, rejected three times, and left alone for quite a while, as, to be fair to the rejecting editors, it wasn’t very interesting. It is one of those poems that, once the initial attraction wore off, became dull and stale.
Winter trees at Little Gidding
Well, the good news is that I have cut the word count by 25% and replaced or reordered a substantial number of the remaining 75%. I’m actually quite keen to send it out again, and I think I know who it’s going to. He has always rejected my haibun, so it will be a good test.
This poem recycling is going quite well. Earlier in the week, whilst clearing out, I found a few line which had petered out, and realised that some of them would fit in with another poem that was parked in poetic purgatory. That one traces its origins back to a poem I managed to lose on my last computer. so I don’t know the full history. I know that I mentioned Fotheringhay in 2017, and again in 2021. From the second post I know that I must have started the poem in April or May 2012. It’s been out four times and has not yet been accepted.
Edit: That should read “I must have started the poem in April or May 2021.”
Once again rewritten, and with a couple of lines dropped in from a poem that never really got going, it’s looking a lot better. It probably needs looking at again, but I am confident it still has some life in it.
Remains of Fotheringhay castle
I too, am glad to hear things are moving again.
🙂
You seem to be getting somewhere
Yes, it’s starting to move again. 🙂
I have probably said this before but I would love to know exactly what a haibun is. Someone, it may have been you, did try to explain it but I still couldn’t get my head around it.
It’s some words and a haiku. There are many complex answers to they question, but they all boil down to that. Sometimes there are more than one haiku.
I have put some links and examples here.
https://quercuscommunity.com/2024/09/01/an-answer-to-a-haibun-question/
Thank you young fella.
No worries, as believe you say. I’m watching a lot of programmes about Australians digging up gold, opals, crystals, gems and old cars. I’m amazed by how much you can find lying about in the outback.
Recycling is all the go these days so you are probably onto a good thing.
Yes, it saves my energy and thought and I use less electricity because I don’t need as much tea. Win/win.
Good all round. (I find that for some reason, I can’t click the like button on your comments, so I have to put in banal comments like this. Sorry.)
No worries – that will be the new and improved like button, I assume.