Comments on: D. Gale: Haiku 1

By: mary hatch

mary hatch — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:58:21 +0000

A familiar experience. Mine involved a driver of an SUV who cut across the bike lane suddenly to pick up a friend. It was a close call.

By: D. Gale

D. Gale — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:11:30 +0000

Alison,

I believe that this is the New Yorker article I once made required reading in a Community College English 101 class:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

It says it all and quite eloquently; good reading for someone getting a license. Of course all cars can hurt, and the biker always loses in the ensuing collision; hell I definitely came in second in a scrape with a Dodge Charger a year and a half ago; if it had been an SUV, I’d have had a punctured lung and broken pelvis at the very least.

Of course–as you nimbly note, the “SUV” is a cheap way to get three syllables (and rhyme). The car that actually cut me off that day and inspired the haiku was a Honda Accord. So much for vehicle-profiling. . .Although it’s also three syllables, I like to vent against the bigger vehicles and how they make a Saturn driver/cyclist feel, i.e. hunted.

By: Alison

Alison — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:41:26 +0000

Those SUVs! The predicament is that people feel they must buy them to stay safe from other SUVs. But, I have recently learned small cars are safe. Yeah for me (I prefer them) and I guess good for bikers, too?

Even though the word “SUV” conjures up so much for people (anger, humour, comfort, whatever) I can really feel the weight of it in the last line. Scary.

I also like the economical look of the poem. Does that make sense? A bare number of words and three syllables with three letters in “SUV”. Poems can be so visual…