PACE Global Haiku • Spring 2007 Dr. Randy Brooks

Deirdre Fields

Delicate Imagination haiku by Deirdre Fields When I began writing prose and poetry, it was awful, as I’m sure that everyone’s first steps into creative writing are. I had so many thoughts and I wanted so badly for the audience to know exactly what I was thinking that I wrote as much detail as I possibly could. This inevitably lead to disaster. As my writing progressed, I began to understand that what is important in works isn’t necessarily what you say, it’s what you leave out. Haiku has been a crystallization of this concept for me. Because of the poem’s obvious brevity each word is chosen specifically, and each other is left out with the same specificity. I’ve never claimed to be a poet, and certainly never conceived of myself as being something so decisive as a haiku poet. But finally, I can say I understand what it means to leave things out, to let words roll around in the mouth and the consciousness, and to be everything to some people, and nothing to others. This is the delicate imagination, and it creates monsters and fairies, and is the essence of haiku.

deep into night crickets and rubber-band frogs summer song

out the window the wide glittering valley loneliness

India ink the lions glide in the grass

circling her arms tattooed fresh vegetables

© 2007, Randy Brooks • Millikin University
All rights returned to authors upon publication.