PACE Global Haiku • January 2008 Dr. Randy Brooks

Glenna McKenzie

Selected Haiku by Glenna McKenzie I have learned a great deal about how to write haiku and what a good haiku consists of even though I am a novice writer. I believe a good haiku should give its readers an image that can place them right in the middle of the haiku. It should have strong emotion and use good descriptive words like “old” or “warm”. Haiku should also give readers a setting and a sense of time. For example, one written by Nick Avis: spring is here the cat’s muddy paw prints on the windowsill This haiku tells me that it is springtime, and that there is a cat on a windowsill. It also gives its readers a good descriptive word, “muddy.” When I wrote my first “good” haiku I was so inspired to write another and another. Many of my haiku I wrote while I was sitting in the car waiting for my kids to get out of school or as I was taking a walk with my son. I believe that haiku are about real life and not metaphors or similes. Nick Virgilio, one of America’s first major haiku poets once said in an interview that he wrote haiku “to get in touch with the real.” People should be able to understand or somewhat understand what the writer is trying to portray. I like to show emotion in my haiku, for example, the following haiku reveals loneliness: old man limping stops to wave nobody’s looking I have learned that there are many different haiku writers each with their own unique way of looking at the world through haiku.

a walk to the park the little boy reaches out… for mommy’s hand

the smell of strawberries from her hair he closes his eyes

snowy night tooth beneath her pillow one buck or two?

small old house brings us closer winter sunrise

© 2008, Randy Brooks • Millikin University
All rights returned to authors upon publication.