For Real Toads: Zuihitsu

Kerry has challenged us to try a new poetic form today at the online writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. New to the Toads, that is, but not necessarily new to eastern poets:

Kerry says: We may take our lead from Kimiko Hahn, who summarized zuihitsu this way: “There’s no Western equivalent [to zuihitsu], though some people might wish to categorize it as a prose poem or an essay… some of its characteristics: a kind of randomness that is not really random, but a feeling of randomness; a pointed subjectivity that we don’t normally associate with the essay. The zuihitsu can also resemble other Western forms: lists, journals. I’ve added emails to the mix.” 

Mine happened to come out in unrhymed couplets. Sometimes life's just like that. When I want to write a poem, I can only think in prose, and when I want to write a prose poem, I produce couplets with lines of three and four syllables.

blue of sky

and green of grass

  
writing notes

reminding self

  
reading books

black print on white

bird on roof

and dog on floor

red of eye

and pain of head

keyboard at

untidy desk

rays of sun

hot, glaring down