Haiku anyone?

Last weekend I had a Haiku class via Zoom (offered through Upper Arlington Parks & Recreation). Here’s the description:

Haiku How-To

October 10 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT

Taught by Jennifer Hambrick

ONLINE CLASS

Maybe you remember writing three-line haiku in grade school and counting each line’s syllables – 5-7-5 – on your fingers. This workshop is your chance to learn the real way to write poems in this ancient, profound and relaxing genre.

Poet Jennifer Hambrick is widely published and has won numerous international awards. Explore the fundamentals of haiku aesthetics and craft, and take your first steps on the haiku path. Bring paper, pencil and imagination.

Incidentally, this is the same class I have signed up for twice previously and it's gotten cancelled both times due to lack of enrollment. The instructor is one of the DJs for WOSU classical 101 FM, so I had heard her on the radio many times, but until now had never met/seen her, so that was cool. Anyway, there were eight of us, which was the cut-off number apparently, so I guess I'm glad I signed up since I was a bit reluctant to bother due to it falling through twice before.  

She conducted the class using Power Point slides and I quickly scribbled down notes from them. We spent most of the time analyzing some poems like dissecting a sentence for its parts. I hadn't realized Haiku poems contain a fragment and a phrase (two usually). Unlike some of Haiku's cousin genres like Senyru and Tanka, Haiku is pretty informal and not strict about enforcing the 5-7-5 rule in the interest of not squashing the creative spirit. Hence, if you have a thought to convey be it in three lines or even one or two, there's a lot of creative leeway. When we were writing our own Haiku, I didn't even think about the amount of syllables. Instead, I tried to phrase my thought in the proper format.

Here's the poem I wrote and had feedback on:

Red and gold leaves
Swirling in tiny whirlwinds
The end is near.

She said tiny is unnecessary, and suggested a less dramatic third line (along the lines of show, don't tell)

Here's my revised edition:

Red and gold leaves
Swirling in whirlwinds
The park is empty at dusk.

Since Jennifer didn't have any plans immediately after class she said it was okay if any of us wanted to stay later. Most of us did, and she quickly went through the rest of her slides and gave us a list of book recommendations and discussed the possibility of future classes. I was thinking it might be interesting to explore some of the other similar genres to Haiku, but not sure I'm that bothered. I'm still not sure whether or not I would attend any future Haiku workshops, though I definitely plan on writing more Haiku, possibly using some of my photographs as inspiration.