Sunday, January 19, 2020

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Contentious Eggplant


troublesome eggplant
hard to sketch and hard to grow
pumpkins are not so

~cie~


notes
So, the challenge was to rewrite a Haiku by Shiki using the Shasei style and then turn it into a Tanka. Please click the banner to learn more. If I try to explain, it will only end up becoming convoluted.

I am not sure I succeeded at Shasaei-ing, but I did learn that Shiki was a rebel, and this I succeed at. After re-imagining his Haiku about eggplant and pumpkins, I thought that adding the Ageku stanza would overshadow the perfect brevity (and sharp snarkitude) of the resulting Senryu, so I am leaving it Ageku-less.

Here is the Eggplant Haiku by Shiki.

Sketching from life —
eggplants are harder to do
than pumpkins

© Masaoka Shiki (Tr. Burton Watson)

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