I had another acceptance yesterday morning, and am feeling slightly fraudulent. The three acceptances I have had recently come to 80, 15 and 6 words respectively. I can just about make out a case for thinking of 80 words as a submission, but when you get down to the shorter poems I begin to wonder. Be honest – what sort of poem is six words long?
Damselfly at Wilford
I know that’s the format, but it sometimes seems like haiku are just a con trick. A good one is like a flash of lightning, but most of them aren’t that good. Even worse, if you read a translation of an old classic, they are often dull and pointless. Of course, most of mine are rejected, so that puts me firmly in my place – I can’t even write an acceptable example of a short, and often tedious, form.
I’m not sure whether this makes me an original thinker or a philistine. Or possibly a heretic.
Meanwhile, we have had woodpeckers in the garden again. We also had a sparrow, which is unusual for us. It’s a little brown bird, which used to be common but is now very patchy in its distribution. This is the first one we have had in the garden at this house.
While I was waiting for a car to take me to the garage to pick my repaired car up (that noise you may have heard earlier was my heart breaking as I opened up my wallet to pay for the new clutch) I noticed three damsel flies flitting around the front garden. I’m sure they were Common Blue Damselflies. One female, two males. Or one female and one male twice. It could be either. The males are blue. A lot of damselflies are blue. It’s very confusing.
Damsel Fly – Wilford
I like the name devil’s darning needle. I don’t use it because damselfly is shorter and I’m lazy. I’m also concerned that using the name devil will endanger my status as an atheist. I don’t generally discuss religion because, like politics, nobody is going to change their on the subject, but when I see some of the things that are happening around the world, and see religion being used as an excuse, I would like to distance myself from them.
It may be that when I die, I will find I am wrong and will have trouble explaining myself, but I feel it is unlikely. However, if there is an afterlife and all that goes with it, people who have been murdering babies in the name of religion will, I hope, have an equally hard time.
Dragonfly
Those are beautiful photos of the damselflies. Sparrows, we have no shortage of them here.
I remember in “Poldark”, George Warleggen asking Ross what did he believe. Ross respoded that he believed belief was a very powerful thing.
We only have two sorts of sparrow – the Tree Sparrow is shy and the House Sparrow has been hit by viruses over the last 20-30 years. 🙁
At one time they used to have “sparrow clubs” in villages to keep numbers down.
I shudder to think what a sparrow club was..
I did have some information on them once. There were a lot of sparrows and they were very visible when picking up spent grain. All the good they did was, of course, ignored and they were persecuted, as we did with so many birds.
I am very envious of your damselflies. Although we have a little pond, we never seem to get dragonflies of any sort in the garden.
As a general observation, if more poets had stuck to writing shorter poems, the world would be a better place in my view. It’s not that there aren’t a few good long poems, but taking the time to read them makes the rest of one’s life shorter so they have to be very good to make it worthwhile.
This is true. I looked at Strange Meeting as set the link and don’t remember it being that long. 🙂
On the farm we made a pond in a washing up bowl and attracted a dragonfly in the first couple of weeks, never to see one again. But you do have frogs.
Religion is such a widespread con-excuse. The weight of words is more important than their amount
Agree to both. 🙂 However, I still think 6 words is pushing it. 🙂
I had a comment about haiku already in my mind before I had read too far. So here goes. A haiku of six words is like posting a photo of a blue damsel fly without any accompanying script. I loved the photo better than a poem..
As long as I can get something right. I was surprised to see them as I always associate them with water, and we have none in the front garden. All the pictures were taken near water. Our lawn is mainly weeds and rabbit droppings.
I think getting a six-word poem exactly right must be extremely difficult. You are so right about not changing anyone’s mind when it comes to politics or religion.
🙂 You know me Laurie – I just throw words at paper and blind chance does the rest. And the more I do, the better I seem to get.
As for being right, it’s a mixed blessing. 🙂