Courts of the Crane Clan

OK. If we're going to make a haiku book, we need to get started.

Add on this thread the following:

1) Your Character Name
2) Your real name (Optional)
3) Your 'in-game' title and clan (IE: Kenshinzen of the Crane Clan) (Optional)
4) A Haiku or a Tanka for you

Reminders:
Haiku are 5 - 7- 5 syllables though if you fudge a syllable for a good reason, you'll usually be able to get away with it.
Tanka have 5 - 7 - 5 - 7 - 7 syllables, in case you have more that you want to say.

Ready to level up?
Symbolism is highly encouraged, sarcasm or general wry self-deprecation are often encouraged, and motifs of mono no aware and the passage of time are particularly thematic for this occasion.

Boss level poetry:
Haiku and Tanka usually have the juxtaposition of two images or ideas with a kireji ("cutting word") between them, and a kigo, or seasonal reference, usually drawn from a saijiki, or traditional list of Japanese imagery.

Pluck your sake cups from the winding waters, and show us what you've got. I'll get it down in a haiku book one way or another before Gencon.

Send me your Haiku, Samurai of Rokugan!
Gencon is coming.

When do you need the haiku by?

Now? Soon? I am hand writing them all in book and it will take time. I also need to know how much filler I need.

Oh, right, there's a deadline for this, isn't there? Well then. It is clearly past time for me to stop fiddling with the wording and just put it up here.

1) Character name: Doji Hideyoshi

2) Real name: Angus Niven

3) In-game title: Courtier of the Crane Clan

4) Poem:
GROWING STRONG:
Festival lanterns
Illuminate its last home—
The great fallen pine
Twenty years of strewn needles
Nourishing the new seedling

I have more, if you'd like, Kaori? (Well, one more. Inspiration for others may or may not come to me before Gencon.)

If anyone else is working on this but feeling stuck, some resources I've found helpful in composing haiku and tanka in the past:

http://www.ahapoetry.com/Bare%20Bones/wfftocintro.html
http://www.ahapoetry.com/Bare%20Bones/b ... intro.html

Overviews of tanka and haiku (respectively) history and techniques.

http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/500ESWd.html
http://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/ha ... index.html

Two collections of kigo. Interestingly, the and things associated with it are an autumn kigo, and the date that most of Japan celebrates it on is actually right before Gencon. A fortuitous bit of symbolism, I think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kireji

In case anyone is as confused as me as to what a cutting-word is and how to use it.

Nice one!

Finishing this today.