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first of my poems i might post, a series of connected haikus. I try to write with my heart in mind, but I'm not sure on this one. Let me know your thoughts!
http://wanderers-sandbox-2.wikidot.com/john-audio
New to this crit thing… I like it, from what I can tell it's about lacking appreciation for one's full life at the end of one's life? Some of it was a bit confusing but I think that's just the effect that extremely metaphotical compact writing like this has so no issue there for the most part. Although I will say the change in presence of punctuation after the second stanaza threw me off the first time, dunno if that was intentional or an oversight :)
hello! thanks for sharing your piece!
i want to briefly note that what you're writing are not, strictly, haiku. i have a whole dedicated section of my poetry guide that touches on haiku. haiku isn't to do with 5-7-5 syllables at all! what you've got going here is something of a linked verse poem comprised of senryu? so if you want inspiration for how to write in this kind of style, you might seek inspiration reading senryu or the collaborative linked verse of renga written by others!
but, suffice it to say, what you have is a poem with stanzas of 5-7-5 syllables. this has led you to some quite interesting and very lovely constructions:
On his last day, spring
He looked at the trees and was
Before he wasn't, gone
…as well as some constructions that are somewhat awkward:
He lives on a hill, in here.
He was proper, life
Yet surrounded by none
the first example stanza works because the contrast between "was" and "wasn't", and the punctuation of "gone", is a neat way to describe death in terms of being and nonbeing, enfolding the concept in commonplace language. elsewhere you are more tongue-tied; the insertion of "proper" and "yet", and the repetition of "in here", shows me that you're struggling a bit to convey the imagery you want in these syllabic constraints; elsewhere words feel awkwardly short, in straitjackets. i would do another pass, reading these stanzas aloud and seeing which words feel superfluous—try to avoid having any words feel like filler. each word should contribute as much as possible to the poem!
moreover, right now you're really keeping yourself to this halting pattern, in which nearly every line is a full clause with a pause at the end and a capitalized letter at the start. this really emphasizes the independence of each line, and chops up your stanzas quite harshly. this puts a lot of pressure on your lines to each be well-constructed and poetically interesting; which puts lines like "What does he look like?" or "His smiles, empty" (too cliche!) at a disadvantage. other lines fare far better though; "His eyes are a deep" is quite interesting when read alone, for example, so the strong enjambment works to your favor there. "Before he wasn't, gone", again, turns out quite well thanks to the interesting ambiguity and double meaning given by the comma. you might consider whether you want to lean more into the independence of these lines, or allow yourself some more fluidity by placing your line breaks more freely, or carefully considering whether you want to break on the clause or break off the clause; a "strong" or a "weak" break. example:
I would consider this
A strong line break
I would consider
this a weak line break
…as reinforced by capitalization, or not! allowing yourself to choose freely between the two means you can divide your lines with more intention behind it, allowing for the lines you really want to be alone to stick out.
as for the imagery and meaning-making/story-telling of the poem, i think stories of regret and death are interesting! the most interesting narrative seed here is the kind of "in between" place, the bardo, that our old guy is thinking from. this kind of narrative place between is and isn't. i also find it interesting that you introduce him as a person whose life is "full", before seemingly contradicting this later. i enjoy the linguistic ambiguity over whether "being gone is no concern" or him not having much longer to live "as he does" (?) is what he doesn't see. also a bit of an awkward line because of the meter—shouldn't it be "of no concern"?—but that being gone is also literally no concern, a state of being unconcerned, is fun too.
there's a lot of chaff in the way; the first stanza is largely useless, and i don't understand the purpose of the rhetorical question "what does he look like". the image of the hill doesn't recur, so i wonder why you focus on it so heavily in the first stanza and in the title. is it a reference to something? i also think the "His smiles, empty / Never fighting for anything" lines are a bit on the nose, a little telling-not-showing. "He spent years hating, watching"—hating what! watching whom? i worry here that the poem is being oddly moralizing without really telling me the story of who this guy is and what he's actually done right or wrong, instead hitting me with slightly stale imagery of hell and fire. though "stages of hell, envy" is a fun twist on the concept of "stages of grief"!
in general i think this poem could use some more sensory imagery, or something to ground me in who this old guy actually is, what is unique about him, where is he as he dies, what specific thoughts does he have before he goes, what does the experience of death or of hell truly feel like, in specific terms, in unique ways. he passes on but i still don't really know much about him, except that his eyes are a "fascinating" blue. but it isn't enough to be told his eyes are fascinating! you have to fascinate me. what was the last thing he ate for dinner? who made it for him, where did the ingredients come from, under what roof or sky did he eat it? what is reflected in his eyes? what kind of blue are his eyes, blue like what, like delftware, like lightning, like cornflowers, like ice cubes, like the blood of a crab? what does he see, smell, hear, taste, feel, kinesthetically sense on his way to the other side? this way, you can better support the good work you've done to touch on abstract imagery and language in interesting ways, and can touch this specific experience to the universal. i really want to see you flesh out this narrative arc, between the sweet appearance of a man, the bitterness he holds within, and the tastelessness of what comes after.
best of luck! thank you for sharing, and i hope to see a second draft soon!
