From OI:

Emerging
wings from Southern seas
melting ice

Now THAT is a beautiful word picture, OI! I love it.

Allow me to continue our "game," then I'll present some questions for consideration and opinions:


Melting ice
From continental icebergs
Global warming

. . . . .


About "emerge" (which you like), I too prefer the sound of it, changing the subject to plural (spring grasses), then it would read:

Hope
Spring grasses
Emerge

and "emerge" would be a verb reflecting back to the plural subject "grasses," right?

However, isn't "emerging" a present participle in the first haiku, this one . . . ?

Hope
Spring grass
Emerging

That is, as a sentence it would read:

Hope--spring grass [is] emerging. OR
Hope! Spring grasses [are] emerging.

But with haiku, the verb is simply left out? I use the following as an example, from englishclub.com:

Gerunds (-ing)

When a verb ends in -ing, it may be a gerund or a present participle. It is important to understand that they are not the same.

When we use a verb in -ing form more like a noun, it is usually a gerund:
•Fishing is fun.

When we use a verb in -ing form more like a verb or an adjective, it is usually a present participle:
•Anthony is fishing.
•I have a boring teacher.

. . . . .


And would you believe when I was in school, gerunds were rarely if ever referenced?! I don't know what else they would have been called back then! Perhaps they left gerunds out of my public school education!

Present participles, gerunds, and dangling participles used to be a hated topic among English teachers coz it was one of the hardest things for the average mind to "catalog" for correct use.

A present-participle-verb such as "emerging" can also become an adjective, which is OI's use of the word. But "emerging" is not easily used as a (noun) gerund.

Gerunds:
Flying is not an easily learned skill.
Playing basketball is one of my favorite pastimes.
Thinking of my dad, I bought a new battery-powered drill that was on sale.

Gerunds are more complicated because they can be use alone or as part of a "compound noun" (e.g., playing basketball), and they may be used as a subject or an object of a sentence, or the subject of a subjunctive clause, etc; at which point(s) they may appear to be verbs rather than gerund-nouns:

I can't listen to that song without remembering my grandmother.
(Without is one of the verbs that require a gerund after it.)

When I really need to talk, she is really good at listening.
(This is an example of an adjective+preposition that requires a gerund after it.)

Here's a good link (with 4-5 following pages) for more examples of gerunds:

http://esl.about.com/od/grammarstruc...ish-Gerund.htm

True, true, Moon and Frankie. I actually never studied much English grammar beyond primary school, though God knows I've studied craploads of all other kinds of grammar. Gerunds are much more obvious in, say, Russian, as they have a different suffix from everything else. In English, a single suffix may mean a number of different things (such as -ing). Midnight brain...

What I meant is, if you write 'emerge', it can be used in a number of ways:
- as an imperative ("Emerge, o white nights of yore!")
- as a plural
- with all kinds of auxiliary verbs ("May emerge", "Will emerge", "Must emerge", "Can emerge", "Did emerge" etc.)
I'm sure there are other ways besides. The point being, this gives the next poet a lot more wiggle room than a singular form, and also more than -ing (whatever its grammatical role happens to be).

Enough grammar. The problem with English (and a number of other Germanic languages) is that they've become so assimilated over the centuries that there is little distinction between the various forms. Now, Hungarian, Finnish, Russian and Latin, to name a few, are way better off

Back to poetry, 4-6-4, and my first haiku/senryu with sarcasm:

Global warming no time to care about better ignore

Oh bummer Frankie got out of doing one syllable sentences

You're welcome to go back to them

Oh there's another page, I didnt notice. Can I just say that I've never been taught gerunds or whatever. I only knew words like simple past and present perfect and imperative existed when I studied spanish.

Good old -ing words.

Originally Posted by OrchestraInside

You're welcome to go back to them

Yes but Frankie refused to be challenged

Better ignore All the little slights Thrown about

Thrown about kisses of the winds wet and cold

Wet and cold seasons pass the grey moon, silent

moon, silent branches whispering time is not

All this syllable count is making me doubt my mathematical skills too :/

Time is not constant, ever changing Flexible

Nonsense, I've never seen you falter yet - was this 3-6-3 intentional?

martall.jpg Flexible bending with the wind ageless, strong

Originally Posted by OrchestraInside

True, true, Moon and Frankie. I actually never studied much English grammar beyond primary school... Midnight brain...

What I meant is, if you write 'emerge', it can be used in a number of ways:
- as an imperative ("Emerge, o white nights of yore!")
- as a plural
- with all kinds of auxiliary verbs ("May emerge", "Will emerge", "Must emerge", "Can emerge", "Did emerge" etc.)
I'm sure there are other ways besides. The point being, this gives the next poet a lot more wiggle room than a singular form, and also more than -ing (whatever its grammatical role happens to be).

Thanks Moon. Your post was reassuring and informative; easy to understand. I'm glad I'm not the only one frightened by gerund.

OI: I couldn't see the forest for the trees. I understand now--your primary point was the usefulness "for greater flexibility," (and I would say also aesthetics!) of one word over another. I am 100% with you regarding the sound of and the flexibility of your better (plural) word recommendation. I focused primarily upon the minor (more difficult and never learned) word gerund v. present participle!

Please do NOT give up on helping me with haiku! and grammar! I need the help, and it becomes a learning tool for others to learn from my mistakes. I represent the lay-person out there who wants to better learn haiku . . . while you and Viv already seem to "be there"!

A haiku dedicated to my husband:



Ageless, strong
Family patriarch
Deep rooted

Originally Posted by Frankie Jasmine

. . . while you and Viv already seem to "be there"!

Be there? I wrote my first ever Haiku poem a few days ago remember. Oh wait it was Senryu actually Give me a few decades to catch up with Ola

I wrote my first haiku, ehh... Last year? And I've only read a few odd internet articles about them, nothing more. I'm good at pretending to know a lot more than I actually do I think that there is a level of sophistication in Japanese poetry which isn't as obvious to the naked eye as in traditional English poetry. I've written two, I think, which I am quite happy with, and the rest are... well, practice. Which is what this thread is all about!

That's a beautiful tribute to your husband, Frankie. This is a tribute to the iconic English ash, sadly dying as we speak:

Deep rooted
shadows of ashes
burning trees

P.S. Yee-haa! The forum admins have heeded us mere mortals and added the left-centre-right buttons (in 'Go Advanced' reply mode). No more messing around with tables to bring the poetry to the centre!

I know they told me Do I get a hero medal?

p.s and there is no need to go advanced

You get 1st prize!!!!

12557909-first-prize-3d-trophy.jpg

Burning trees
Flames of bright orange
Dry autumn

Hey, maybe you guys are humble, but you both are naturals, because you've done them so well from the start. But I'm glad to hear that in your own (humble) minds, you consider yourselves novices and in "practice mode." . . . .OI: Thank you for the explanation of the ash trees. Otherwise I would have read "ash" only as "burned ashes" from a fire. That was a nice tribute to a dying tree group . . .

Viv! You got another prize!

Practice
3-5-3:

Engine you
motoring my train
into blue

Good? No?

Continuing

Dry autumn
seeds winterfest in
evergreen