Global Haiku • Fall 2014
Dr. Randy Brooks

Relation(ships)

by
Erin O'Brien

I chose the title Relation(ships) because the haiku that I have included in this collection contain an aspect of a relationship. These relationships are between family, friends, significant others, and even nature. The significance of the parentheses to have the word "ships" emphasized is to create a picture. Ships travel. They can travel to open, distant, cold, dangerous, or tropical places and then return back to their main port. They symbolize the events and stages that can happen throughout a relationship.

My approaches to these haiku are based on the outside picture of a relationship. They also will try to focus on the emotions that a person may be feeling in the certain situation. I hope these haiku affect you personally, in whatever situation you may be, so that you can take your own approach to the meaning behind the words.

Reader's Introduction

Erin O'Brien's collection of haiku is one that appeals to all emotions. By focusing on human relationships - be they with family, friends, pets, significant others, or strangers – these haiku are able to appeal to the deepest emotions of the reader. Despite the brevity and abstractness of the poems I was able to personally relate to the emotions created through the haiku. Some of these haiku made me smile from ear to ear, while others made me reflective and a bit sad. The ones that made me happy often did so by evoking a memory, an example being:

small feet,
in her dad's big shoes . . .
ready to go to work

This haiku made me think of all of the times I would put on my father's shoes and pretend to be him, a member of the work force. Reading these short lines made me yearn for the simplicity of childhood, and in a way it took me back to that time. It takes diction choices for a combination of just 12 small words to take a reader back to a time of simplistic bliss, and to let that reader feel the joy they had then. Similarly, the darker poems have a comparable effect on the reader, bringing up emotions that lurk in the back of our minds until something, like a haiku prompts them forward.

~Savannah Riestenberg

small feet,
in her dad's big shoes . . .
ready to go to work

see-saw
balancing decisions
she can't make

one glance—
you were gone
leaf in the wind

winter chill
I can still feel
your embrace

roar of the engine
I say goodbye to
my old friend

everyone has baggage
who are you to decide?
How much you can carry.

photographs
some time with
Dad

my younger brother
destroyed—
Check mate!

wishing he could
fly               man
with 2 canes

tucked in a corner—
how will I know
when love finds me?

someone should warn
Jack Frost—
I bite back!