Biographical Background

Carlos Fleitas was born in Uruguay, South America and still resides there in Montevideo, which is Uruguay's capital city.  He writes haiku, prose, and essays in both Spanish and English.  This 51 year old writer, has a wife and a daughter that live with him.  He attended school at Stella Maris College (Christian Brothers)-School and High School and obtained a University Degree in Psychology. from "Instituto de FilosofÌa Ciencias y Letras.” He is married and has one daughter. 

This profile of haiku writer, Carlos Fleitas, was researched, written and created by Medea Mosxona.

See Medea's essay on the
Musical Haiku of Carlos Fleitas

Scroll through the entire profile, or jump to any section:

• biographical background
• reader response essay
• bibliography
• additional web links & resource

Additional Web Links and Resources

You can contact Carlos Fleitas via his web site (e)literature.

Viento de Verano
Junto pètalos de rosa
y los dejo ir

•

In my way home
grapes ripen in the fields
a sip of wine

Author's Publications

His haiku have mostly been published on the Internet at: The World Haiku Review, The Heron's Nest, Free temps WebS, Haiku Hut, El Rincon del Haiku, El Viejo Faro,  Imaginante, and Los Mejores- Haiku en la Red.

If you are interested in reading more of Fleitas Haiku you can check out his website.  He has not yet published a book.  Fleitas has only just started to submit his work for awards.

Reader Response Essay

Fleitas has a very core idea about haiku that he tends to focus on.  This idea is the musicality of haiku.  This is the reason that I chose to study him, as well as to study Spanish haiku.  I had long wondered what made me appreciate Spanish poetry and haiku above English which is my native language.  After reading a Fleitas’ article, “Musicality in Haiku Written in Spanish: a Platonism?”  I discovered why I tend to enjoy Spanish haiku more.  While Spanish haiku depend on the rhythmic nature of stresses, English usually depend upon accents.  This could be why Spanish flows better than English.  If we think of words as sounds, then we become very aware of what we like and what we dislike. This is ‘sonority’ and Fleitas feels that that is the underlining principle that makes us either like or dislike certain poems. 

Rhythm is part of what makes us like the haiku that we like. Fleitas believes that Spanish haiku can have a very good musicality as long as it is sincere and balanced.  It must follow standards however.  “The two standards are consonant and assonant rhyme.

Consonant rhyme in Spanish happens when the last accented vowel of the verse, and all vowels and consonants that may follow it, are the same in all the rhymed words”  He cites this example by Malena Imas also of Uruguay,

“La playa sola
mecidas por las olas
las caracolas...”

Fleitas says that, “The musicality here is brought, not only by means of the use of the consonance, but also as its rhyme merges with the content of the haiku; that is, the waves of the sea with its natural rhythm, and the landscape of a seashore in which the conches are gently rocked, as if it where a lullaby…”

Musicality plays a large role in many of Fleitas own haiku.  I noticed that many times he will have the same opening line to a haiku and then generate 5 or 6 more haiku from the same opening line.  For example,

A rocky corner
at the quiet lonely seashore
rapture at dawn

  A rocky corner
where seagulls land and rest
rapture at dawn

A rocky corner
naked and empty of herbs
rapture at dawn

A rocky corner
with some spots of lone reeds
rapture at dawn

A rocky corner
wet and still after the rain
rapture at dawn

  A rocky corner
red and orange crabs hasten
rapture at dawn”

All of these haiku begin with the line “A rocky corner” and then end with “Rapture at dawn.” However the middle of each is quite different.  When I asked him about it, he responded that it was a “tradition in Music, to play variations on the same tune. It is also frequent in Jazz.”  He uses this to help him take new approaches to his writing and also because it “a sight or an idea, can have so many different approaches as it reflects the diversity and fluency of the world.  Therefore a group of rocks may have, folded, thousands of haiku.”  Another important aspect of this approach is that because it invited the reader to help the writer decide which haiku version is best.  “I like the reader to have the possibility of looking in the "inner laboratory* of the writer. I mean, how he can work on different versions of a same haiku and finally choose one to publish.  I invite the reader to join, and choose the one he or she likes best.

And maybe write a haiku, starting with the fix line...”