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

[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.