To the Editor:

My letter “Watch for deer while driving” published in the STJ on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006, needs a couple of corrections. First, my bad, I capitalized haiku and it does not appear to be such a word.

Perhaps it was because I respect the poetry form so much.

Secondly, your paper butchered the haiku I sent you.

The poems were stuck together as one long poem. I submitted

five separate poems of

three lines.

These were numbered #1, # 2, #3, #4, and #5 in the way Richard Wright numbered the thousands of haiku he wrote. My poetic and compliance nature could not let this go. Perhaps it was a spacing thing where the newspaper column would not allow the spaces.

Nevertheless, I do not want the good people who read the STJ to be unaware of what a haiku is.

The Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia defines haiku as a “Japanese verse form, notable for its compression and suggestiveness.

It consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.”

I adhered to the three lines and the proper number of syllables per line.

However, a couple of my haiku had rhyming words and I misplaced the ? in #1.

Here are two of the deer haiku for you to better understand!

#1

What do you think me

Deer by the side of the road,

Gracefully poised there?

#4

Deer on the roadside

Standing near the river bridge,

STAY THERE, Standing Deer!

You should try writing a haiku or two. It is a challenge to express something in this short and designated way.

Hope you don’t mind this poetry lesson.

I just couldn’t let Mrs. Gussie Collins think I did not learn proper form in her classes, nor, as the Class Poet of A.G. Parrish, Class of 1965, could I let this matter go! Drive carefully … the deer seem to be coming out younger and younger with and without their moms.

Gail Box Ingram

Valley Grande