children's
book
sh
elves
Best of Showcase, Under the Basho, 2013
Michael Dylan Welch
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
兒 童
書
加
木
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
儿 童
书
加
木
Bio Sketch
Michael
Dylan Welch is vice president of the Haiku Society of America, founder
of the Tanka Society of America (2000), and cofounder of Haiku North
America conference (1991) and the American Haiku Archives (1996). In
2010 he also started National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo),
which takes place every February, with an active Facebook page. His
personal website is www.graceguts.com, which features hundreds of
essays, reviews, reports, and other content, including examples of his
published poetry.
This minimalist visual haiku is made up of two words: children's bookshelves, and Michael's thematically and emotionally effective typographical arrangement of bookshelves -- book, sh (an exclamation to request silence or quiet), elves (plural form of elf) -- not only holds the surprise and excitement of the poem, but also adds mythological depth to the poem.
ReplyDeleteNote: Below is excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, Elf:
An elf (plural: elves) is a type of supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore.[1] Reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends almost entirely on texts in Old English or relating to Norse mythology.[2] Later evidence for elves appears in diverse sources such as medical texts, prayers, ballads, and folktales...
... The "Christmas elves" of contemporary popular culture are of relatively recent tradition, popularized during the late nineteenth-century in the United States. Elves entered the twentieth-century high fantasy genre in the wake of works published by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, for which, see Elf (Middle-earth).
I love this visual haiku - I know it well. It is so clever and never fails to make me smile. :)
ReplyDeletemarion