Module 3: Poetry Break: Unusual Form: Senryu

Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku

by Paul B. Janeczko and J. Patrick Lewis

Creating Haiku and then Senryu: One of the most beautiful and delicate forms of poetry is the tiny haiku, developed in long-ago Japan. Haiku comes from the word hokku, meaning "beginning phrase." The poet begins a picture with his words, and the reader completes it with his imagination. A haiku poem unites the poet and the reader for one brief moment in a common life experience.

The formula for writing haiku is simple.

Line 1 = 5 syllables

Line 2 = 7 syllables

Line 3 = 5 syllables

Haiku is usually about nature and typically has two thoughts. The first thought is what the poet observes. The second thought is his personal feelings or interpretation of what he sees.

As the authors of Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku say in their forward, "Senryu is the kissin' cousins of haiku!" A senryu poem has the haiku structure and is often confused with it. Named after its inventor, Senryu Karai, the poem's topic centers on human nature, particularly the dark side. Cynicism or dark humor can underlie the images. Modern senryu can be a form of flash fiction, like a snapshot of a situation but layered with meaning. (http://www.ehow.com/)

Introduction: While this book had me at the title: Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku, I was delighted to open the book and be satisfied with hilarious senryu's that are silly, pithy, and filled with outrageous remarks! This type of poetry would be best experienced following a unit on Haiku.

My older sister

gets a complete makeover--

very mascary!

Freedom vanishes

as the babysitter arrives...

kids are tied in nots

Traveling circus--

the knife thrower

hiccups

Extension: Read each of the three senryu's (that are written on the board) and without discussing or showing the book illustrations, ask the students to illustrate one of the senryu's. Take time to read each poem again and ask students to share their interpretations. Leave the book available for students to read other senryu's and to enjoy the comical illustrations! This book and activity would be a great introduction for a lesson on figurative language (simile, metaphor, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, hyperbole, idioms, clichés).

Janeczko, Paul B. and J. Patrick Lewis. 2006. Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Photo courtesy of http://www.target.com/

Module 3: Book Review: Verse Novel

Stop Pretending: What Happened When

My Big Sister Went Crazy

by Sonya Sones

Plot Summary: This novel in verse by Sonya Sones is an autobiographical memoir. It tells the story of what happened when the author was thirteen years old and her nineteen year old sister had a nervous breakdown and was later hospitalized. Feeling quite alone, the author writes about her loneliness, her family torn apart by grief, and the heartbreak of losing her sister to mental illness.

Critical Analysis: This novel, told in first person, is a compilation of poems which are no less than five lines and no more than three pages long. The authors use of free-verse poems in this award winning novel, allows the reader to share in the heroine’s thoughts and feelings. Reading the journal entries, a bond is created between the reader and "Cookie" (aka Sonya Sones). Cookie’s losses feel real and painful. The small glimmers of hope become joyful celebrations to the reader. Sones' choice of book title, Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy immediately caught my interest as I have a teen-age niece who was recently diagnosed as bi-polar. This novel could have easily been written by her younger sister and one that I wish I could tactfully recommend that she read. Sones' novel is by no means a lighthearted book of prose poetry but a memoir of a young lady who faces a life changing experience while mourning the loss of her sister, as she once was, to manic depression.

Excerpt:

In The Morning

there's

this golden moment

when the sun

licks through the gauze

fluttering at my window

warming my eyelids to opening


this golden moment

when I'm not yet awake enough

to remember

that there are things

I would rather

forget

Extension: Read this novel in a middle/high school literature class. Discuss what Cookie might be feeling if she was a student at your school. Locate other novels that depict mental illnesses such as The Bell Jar, or Girl Interrupted and/or films such as Sybil, or One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest in order to gain a deeper understanding of what it feels like to lose someone to mental illness. This may help students be more understanding towards the lives touched by mental illness and perhaps enable them to be more sympathetic to others who are "different".

Sones, Sonya. 1999. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Photo courtesy of http://www.target.com/