Tracing changing visions

[larryhammer]

First draft of 5 Nov 07:

These geese, flying south;
from these mountains and valleys,
I fold my own birds.

As posted 6 Nov 07:

Geese are flying south.
From mountain and valley folds
birds come to my hand.

Draft of 7 Nov 07:

Honkers flying south;
from the mountains and valleys
a bird folds to hand.

Draft of 8 Nov 07:

The honkers fly #$@^%#U*
argh ...

---L.

Comments

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

First line of Nov 6 is fine. You're on your own with "folds"...

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Damn, you know we're all going to spend the rest the day now trying to rewrite your haiku for you?

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

geese fly south over
valley folds
a bird into my hand

I hate you SO MUCH.

[larryhammer]

My work here is done?

The second/third line of Nov 7 is closest to what I was trying to capture when I started. My sense of prosody is Western enough to really want a line break after "valleys," for the syntactical ambiguity.

---L.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

see, I would argue the syntactical ambiguity is greatest with folds on the same line as valley. But that's because I easily remember that paper folds; valleys, not so much.

And now you've somehow given me a sneezing fit! Curse you.

Sneezing?

[larryhammer]

Interesting. With fold off the second line, I see greater ambiguity because mountain fold and valley fold are technical terms in origami.

Hmm.

---L.

maybe I'm allergic to geese?

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Well, again, I was seeing that more clearly with folds actually attached to valley. Moreover, by the end I'm so busy going: "aha! origami!" that I've completely forgotten that valleys and mountains also fold idiomatically in English.

ps. I think I saw those same birds flying over Conesus Lake on the other side of the state. Though they have a distracting habit of not actually flying south.

Re: maybe I'm allergic to geese?

[larryhammer]

Most of them were heading down the Hudson valley, except for the odd occasional V heading the other way.

---L.

Re: maybe I'm allergic to geese?

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

except for the odd occasional V heading the other way.

Yeah, what's up with that? They just realized they left the oven on?

Re: maybe I'm allergic to geese?

[larryhammer]

That's what I wondered. Or maybe they'd left one of the chilluns on the stove.

---L.

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

There there, hair pats.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

"I fold my own birds" is nice. "Honkers" puts me in mind of a flock of large noses on the wing. (Sorry. As you know, Lipizzans are Masters of Honkitude.)

I like the insight into the process. :)

[larryhammer]

Heh. Well, they kinda sounded like flying noses. (There were lots of migrators over WFC. Way cool.)

---L.

[the-red-baron.livejournal.com]

I really like the first one best, except for the repetition of "these."

[larryhammer]

The repetition was part of what I was trying to address in revision, along with the overinsistant rhyme with geese.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love your first two a lot!

and the draft of 8 Nov--those are oracle-bone ideographs you're using at the end, yeah? :-P

[larryhammer]

Something like that.

I'm leaning towards a final draft of

Geese are flying south --
from these mountains and valleys,
I fold my own birds.

I like the compressed imagery of "a bird folds to hand," but it's a bit out of place in a haiku. ---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think I disagree with the notion of compressed imagery being out of place (my husband likes to talk about 'unpacking' a tanka--or a haiku--but regardless of that, I very much like your final draft; "from these mountains and valleys" is a perfect pivot phrase.

[larryhammer]

Maybe I mean, it's a bit overcompressed. Yes, there's unpacking to be done, for a good haiku or tanka, but too much and we're getting into deep wordplay territory.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(so slow in my responses... sorry about that)

That makes good sense :-)

[kate_nepveu]

While I initially liked the second best, it probably doesn't work if you don't know (1) mountain & valley folds and (2) that you've been doing origami. This conveys that better.

Random origami pictures! http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/194434.html

[larryhammer]

Yeah, that's more or less the reason I kept working on it.

Oo -- that's a NICE steggy. Looks like the Montroll model? Only, how'd the folder get it so small? Oy!

(I'm at our local con right now, and the anime room had origami paper out -- so I've been folding during panels and readings and leaving the results around the registration desk. I've Montrol's Chinese zodiac/mythological creatures book with me. The griffin folded from 6-inch paper is *cute*.)

---L.

[kate_nepveu]

A lot of hard work, I think. =>

No chance of a picture of the griffin?

[larryhammer]

It was gone before I could get one. I snapped one of the Chinese dragon from the same volume, though -- I'll post that if I can get it downloaded.

---L.

[azang.livejournal.com]

LOL!

[(Anonymous)]

Why not keep the lot as a set, like "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html

(houseboatonstyx)

[larryhammer]

Mainly because, they're all trying to say the same thing, while the "Thirteen Ways" are all different.

I should try that sometime, though.

---L.

[maryosmanski.livejournal.com]

Thirteen ways.

There are nine-and-sixty ways
Of writing tribal lays...
And all of them are right.

four and twenty blackbirds
folded into a valley hand
I'll see your thirteen and raise you
eleven, one-eyed jacks are wild
geese flying south



It's late. I'll shut up now.

[larryhammer]

*blink* *blink*