Luanne Castle: Poetry and Other Words (and cats!)

Tag Archives: autumn equinox

by Luanne | October 11, 2023 · 5:15 am

“Cold Dew” Season: #TankaTuesday

This is the “Cold Dew” season for Colleen Chesebro’s #TankaTuesday challenge based on the 24 Japanese seasons.

All Northern Hemisphere Weather is Not Similar

When I was a child in Michigan I loved fall because by the end of idyllic summers I was bored and ready for a change. My neighbor had a huge garden, and he let us harvest his pumpkin patch. He would gather his corn stalks and tie them together into teepee-shaped shocks. The air began to cool and the maple trees would turn red, the oaks yellow. My father and I would rake the falling leaves into piles. Then I would jump in the crunchy heaps and pretend to be Joan of Arc burning at the stake. Before my father lit the piles, he would pull me out, shaking his head at my dramatics. As an adult, I moved out west, away from the vivid seasons of Michigan. Today I live in Arizona, where it is October 11 and still 100F degrees.

Time to carve pumpkins,

Halloween Jack O’Lanterns,

and swim in the pool.

My kigo (season) word is “pumpkin patch.” I wrote a haibun because I wanted to convey more information than I could in most syllabic forms. This is because of the contrast between the idea of the “Cold Dew” season and the reality of October 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona.

orange pumpkins on a field — Photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya on Pexels.com

57 Comments

Filed under #amwriting, #bloggingcommunity, #poetrycommunity, #TankaTuesday, Poetry, Syllabic Poetry, Writing

Tagged as #poetrycommunity, #TankaTuesday, autumn equinox, haibun, kigo, syllabic poetry

by Luanne | October 5, 2023 · 2:17 pm

Week 2 of the Autumn Equinox: #TankaTuesday

This is week two of The Autumn Equinox (September 22 – October 7) Shubun 秋分 for Colleen Chesebro’s new #TankaTuesday challenge based on the 24 Japanese seasons.

My kigo (season) word is Homecoming as in high school and college Homecoming events. This is one I have made up, but for me it represents mid-Autumn, the Autumn Equinox. I have a second kigo for a second poem. I used bonfire because although we had them both summer and fall, the fall ones were the ones that seemed magical, almost mystical.

I wanted to choose a syllabic form that is new to me, and I was intrigued by one that Colleen shared last time.

From the 24 Forms/kouta:

The kouta is a popular Japanese verse form of the Muromachi Period, 14th thru 16th century. They resurrected the lyrical song as a geisha song in the late 1800s and it’s still popular today. Koutas were originally meant to be sung out loud, like many other old forms of poetry. Techniques like assonance and consonance would fit right in with the form, but they aren’t required.

The kouta has several variations, though always short in only 4 lines a 5th line is sometimes is added. Themes reflect ordinary life and often use colloquialisms and onomatopoeia. The most popular are love songs.

We write kouta in four lines but sometimes five, that tends to celebrate the average person’s everyday life in song.
Colleen Chesebro

The kouta lines are always an odd number of syllables, usually 5 or 7 mixed, such as 7-5-7-5- or 7-7-7-5.

(untitled)

My son in a new black suit, (7)

daughter in semi-formal, (7)

their dates the first future glimpse. (7)

All are shiny smiles. (5)

Bring on Homecoming! (5)

(untitled)

One year we had a bonfire (7)

post our winning game. (5)

The smell of woodsmoke, night breeze, (7)

the high point before (5)