Haiku Death Match featured in PD

Kudos to Karen Sandstrom, for her continued efforts to support the poetry community of Greater Cleveland. Check out her article from the Plain Dealer (photo at left also from PD, by Chris Stephens) on the upcoming Haiku Death Match. It starts . . .

"Back in middle school English class, haiku was the perfect poetry.

Haiku poems were short, and the rules of engagement were simple. The first line contained five syllables, the middle line contained seven, and the third contained five. If you had to read haiku, it didn't take long. If you had to write it, something about that 17-syllable construction made your poem sound not-half-bad.

Turns out all that simplicity was tad too simple. Haiku isn't always 17 syllables. Oh, and a haiku is supposed to allude to the seasons. There also should be a "cutting word," or a point in which the idea in the poem turns sharply in another direction."

Read the rest of the piece here.