"If I could split you wide open / mine the jewels from your mind / I swear I won't get too greedy"

I've mentioned renga before, a collaborative Japanese verse form where one person writes the first half (5-7-5) of a poem and another writes the last half (7-7), then someone else writes a second half (5-7-5) to that, then another capping that (7-7), and so on till you have a long chain of bits, each both the last half of one poem and the first half of a separate, unrelated poem. (Writing a good opening 5-7-5 was a prized skill, and haiku evolved from that.)

A little bit ago, asakiyume and I started playing with one in her journal, sparked by a photo she posted. In the original, there were all sorts of rules about the length of the chain and the order subjects were brought up. We ignored those, the form being difficult enough as it is. A complete copy is ( behind the cut )

This was, as you can probably tell, great fun. Thank you, asakiyume, for letting me take part.

---L.

"If I could split you wide open / mine the jewels from your mind / I swear I won't get too greedy"

I've mentioned renga before, a collaborative Japanese verse form where one person writes the first half (5-7-5) of a poem and another writes the last half (7-7), then someone else writes a second half (5-7-5) to that, then another capping that (7-7), and so on till you have a long chain of bits, each both the last half of one poem and the first half of a separate, unrelated poem. (Writing a good opening 5-7-5 was a prized skill, and haiku evolved from that.)

A little bit ago, asakiyume and I started playing with one in her journal, sparked by a photo she posted. In the original, there were all sorts of rules about the length of the chain and the order subjects were brought up. We ignored those, the form being difficult enough as it is. A complete copy is ( behind the cut )

This was, as you can probably tell, great fun. Thank you, asakiyume, for letting me take part.

---L.