American Sentences: They are haiku-length poems that Allen Ginsburg suggested be limited to 17 syllables, like haiku in Japanese and like the Heart Sutra in Buddhism. The following two sentences are such American Sentences of 17 syllables.
I caress the shark’s jagged teeth with terrible Ivan’s ruthless hand.
Ruth with jagged knife caresses her lover’s heart, leaving him ruthless.
I caress the shark’s jagged teeth with terrible Ivan’s ruthless hand.
Ruth with jagged knife caresses her lover’s heart, leaving him ruthless.
6 comments:
These are hard to do. You did them excellently.
Everyone says, "a sentence? I can write a sentence." It's tougher than it seems. And you've crafted two great ones.
i have not tried these yet. i like how you have ruth and ruthless.
Ooh, the second one...very powerful!! Both had such a strong impact.
I nearly tried to use Ruthless as in "without Ruth," but I couldn't pull it off. Nicely done. :-)
One neat thing about haiku is that in Japanese, they two are written in one line (a vertical line) and the reader puts the breaks in according to the 5, 7, 5 rule.
Nicely done; I like the "American sentence" haiku.
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