by Kelly

Haiku poets of yore used the measured three-line form to express moments of quiet clarity. Today, though, writers are using haiku to express all sort of emotions, including rage.

Enter F U Haiku, a new collection of 5-7-5 haiku written by Beth Quinlan and Perry Taylor.

Roughly 200 poems are gathered in its pages. Each one is filled with bitterness and spite. These “pissy poems” (as they are described in the introduction) are aimed at everything from traffic jams to taxes to bad waitresses to bonus-taking bankers.

This one aimed straight for the airlines:

Flight to France canceled

All I got was this lousy

Voucher. What the F * * * ?

While I bleeped out the swear word here, the book doesn’t.

And, of course, you can’t have a collection of angry little poems without including several on the topic of “my ex sucks.” Like this one:

You told your friends I

Sucked in bed. I proved you wrong

One friend at a time.

I was hoping that F U Haiku would be funny in a sarcastic sort of way. And it was, I guess.

But after reading through the whole thing, that’s not the vibe I got. Instead, I felt overwhelmed by anger. I wasn’t angry, but I felt like the writers definitely were — which perhaps I should have picked up on from the title. But to be totally honest, all that anger was a turn off.

It was a bit like watching the polarized pundits on some political talk show take swings at one another. Their bickering holds your attention for a while, but then it gets to a point where they are just so obviously enraged that you can’t stand to watch them anymore.

Maybe I would have been better off only reading two or three F U Haiku at a time. Maybe then these “pissy poems” would have stuck me as funny as opposed to resentful and irate. But since I didn’t …

If you’re looking to get yourself worked up into a tizzy, let me know. I’ll send you my copy of F U Haiku.

by Kelly

stuck in a dry cold spell –

I’m grasping at haiku that

remain elusive

salmon and sturgeon

swim away, lashing their tails

as I cast my net

Read more of Raymond Garraud’s haiku.
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