(Contributor – To Fawn)
Dear Fawn:
Having read your call to contribute to your new column, I hear by send you the above three short poems.
A City in the City
Wraps up the dominant
Yet, the burg wards off the attack
At last they merge in one
The Height of Love
Love, a summit topped by feelings
Higher than human reach
Fully enjoyable, ascending from the valley up
Gurgles of the Delight
Music pleases greatly
The very saddened heart
Casting the depressing canopy away
(Fawn – To contributor)
These are beautiful, Editor. They all capture the concept of two lines together and one from out of the blue well. They don’t follow the 575 rule I suggested but then rules are made to be broken and these demonstrate that effectively. One point I hadn’t reflected on was that these Japenese forms can also be simply short-long-short in line construction. They don’t have to follow the syllable counts at all as 575 was just a guideline. The first of these meets those criteria.
One could make recourse to syllable count on
(Contributor 2-Fawn)
Dear Fawn
Do we have to do the syllables count
As in the following example?
Example
How many syllables are there in together?
3 syllables
Divide together into syllables: to-geth-er
Stressed syllable in together: to-geth-er)
Two has one syllable. Birds too has one syllable
Summing up “Two birds together” will have five syllables
(1+1+3=5)
“And one flew out of the sea” has 7 syllables
In the same way “Haiku, coo-cuckoo” has five syllables
Altogether the poem
// Two birds together
And one flew out of the sea
Haiku, coo-cuckoo
Will have (5+7+5) 17 syllables
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 9 February 2020
BY JOSEPH SOBOKA
