hahaha - yeah, what would Data's haiku be like? I think he could get quite good at haiku. I love the Data episodes the most - particularly when they are dealing with his artistic side, or the difference (or lack of difference) between humans and androids, and where (and why) we draw a line between robot/human.

Recently I wrote some Star Trek haiku myself, and then I decided to search and see if there were any more - turns out there are 5 of us here on DA. One is about Data and his paintings.

Check these out if you have the time or inclination: [link]

To boldly go where no haiku has gone before!!


All the best,
Dick from Solar

--
"We are intent on reducing art to its simplest expression, which is love." (Andre Breton)

Thanks for the comment. I've been on DA for about thre years now (I think) and you're the first to comment...and I'm glad it's on this and not on my other 'art'. I was quite proud of this one, since I don't write any kind of poetry very well, and this one kinda fell into my lap - so to speak.
Took the time to enjoy yours as well and I'm quite impressed, they're much better than my one haiku.

well, not that I necessarily agree with you (about mine being better) but I have been writing haiku for a year and a half or two years now - it just takes practice.

Once I started to understand the forms and structures it began to fall into place (which I only discovered by reading them - there are no books or articles I have found which really nail these things - they all talk about syllables and nature and what not - which in modern haiku are not essential in any way). I tried for years to write haiku without reading haiku and I never could - once I came on DA and started reading through the various poets on here it started to make sense slowly (some are really good - check out my "favourites" if you want to see some I like - I have a section just filled with haiku by others I have found).

For instance - a lot of haiku use "floating lines" or "pivot words" to achieve their effect, in which one line in the poem allows the poem to be read in multiple ways. For instance;

light
leaves
grass

In this poem does the light leave the grass (at dusk) or do the leaves fall to the grass in the sunlight? Or are the leaves "light" in weight floating above the grass below them? That is one of the structures which is common (there are many more). I am planning to write an article on these structures soon so that haiku might become a little easier to understand for Western writers wanting to approach it. Translations of Japanese classics are not always that helpful in terms of learning these things because they don't translate them to have floating lines - these are usually taken out and the multiplicity of the structure is reduced to a straight narrative.

Yours uses fragments, which is also common to haiku - ie. the last line is not necessarily connected in a clear way to the other two and therefore the audience has to re-connect the images for themselves, to create along with the poem to some degree. In some senses the first two lines could be about a human, but in the last line I have to reconsider it, to reverse over the poem and reflect on it. That is why this is a good haiku to me (and because it is fun to read and about something I really like).

By the way - if you want me to receive a message telling me that you have replied you have to hit "reply" at the bottom left of this box, rather than just leaving a new message. As it is I just happened to revisit for a second read and noticed you had replied.

Great work!!

All the best,
dick from solar

--
"We are intent on reducing art to its simplest expression, which is love." (Andre Breton)