No Sestinas, but here's a Haiku!

I am failing again at the sestina. Apparently my old college try isn't good enough, considering that my study habits in college were fairly typical in the whole "wait til 8 hours before the paper is due to open the book" method.

I did some googling to expand on what I already know about the sestina, but didn't find much other than the history of the form and a few suggestions on how to begin writing one from scratch. My typical way of starting, and never finishing, is the more common but least successful way: pick 6 end words and force them into line (haha). Several people suggest that a better way is to just write the first stanza of the poem and then the end words will be given to you by default. So I think I might try that method later this week.

In the meantime, I revisited 'You Know That Blog' for her weekly haiku meme. Last time I was blogging I participated a few times and decided now is the perfect time to start up again, what with my new blog and it being poetry month and participating in Blogher's poetry themed NaBloPoMo. If you aren't into her weekly haiku feature, the rest of Jenn's blog is pretty interesting. The lame thing about picking this week join in on the haiku fun is that it's an open theme week. I hate open themes. I prefer forced topics--sounds less creative but I feel like I get to spend more time being creative with my writing time rather than spending a chunk of it brainstorming. Even though I have a ton of ideas to use for "later", when I am actually sitting down none of them feel appealing.

Today, however, I wasted work time instead on brainstorming! This kind of reflects my mood this afternoon:

A complete lack of
Everything necessary
To survive this time

I'm annoyed with the "A", even though it works and if I was being objective could say it was kind of putting the emphasis on the rest of the line (it's a bit of a stretch but still). I feel a little like the "A" was a cop-out syllable. Oh and technically the second line is 8 syllables, but since I (and most everyone I know) pronounces it "ev-ree" not "ev-er-ee" I feel it works.

Now, back to the sestinas...