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.