My first haiku

The first haiku I ever had published was one I wrote while attending my first haiku class. We were told to write several haiku between classes and bring them in for discussion and feedback. I was thinking about my daughter and how messy her desk at school always was. At a parent-teacher conference in second grade, the teacher had shown me how messy her desk was, and it felt a lot like she was trying to embarrass my daughter. I was looking through the desk with my daughter when I had the very grim thought – what if I had to do this because she had died? It was a very sad thought. 

This memory come to mind when I was trying to write haiku for my class, and the first image for a haiku popped into my head. 

all the lunch-box I-love-you notes spill from her desk

I was thinking about how much I loved her, and all the little notes I put in her lunches to let her know I was thinking about her when she was away at school, so I added -

strawberries in summer

When I presented this haiku in class for feedback, I was given several suggestions for editing.  Most of them I ignored, as I am wont to do, but I did agree that changing “her” to “the” helped to remove it from my memory and place it in the more neutral public sphere. Then I was told the last line was kind of meh. It lacked contrast with the first image, and wasn’t a very interesting image. After playing around with it, the idea of “strawberries in winter” emerged. What a difference! For one thing, it is far more unique to think about a juicy, sweet summer fruit in the dead of winter. In haiku, Winter is often associated with cold, loneliness, things ending, and death. To have a brief moment of summer – life, warmth, sunshine – in the midst of winter…now that is a precious moment. So this provided more contrast which is more interesting, and brought stronger emotion to the poem. After I reworked it with the new season, I submitted it to Modern Haiku for consideration and they did me the great honor of accepting it for inclusion in their next issue. It thus became my first ever published poem, and that is such an amazing feeling. I hope you all get to experience that feeling first hand with your own writing!

all the lunch-box I-love-you notes spill out of the desk strawberries in winter

               -Rachel Lentz, Modern Haiku vol 53.2