Crystalline

A Crystalline Poem, created by Denis Garrison, is a type of a small poem that is like a haiku, has 17 syllables, but is comprised of couplets. The primary focus of a Crystalline poem is to "assimilates as much as possible from the Japanese haiku tradition into the English poetic tradition."

The inspiration of Crystalline can be traced from haiku where both are at their best when structured in the present tense. The Crystalline poem borrows the cutting of word (Kireji) which is a characteristic of the Haiku. The cutting of word in the Crystalline application "cuts off" one view of the reader to a different view.

A poem that stand alone like the Crystalline, it uses the couplet long line structure similar to that of a long poem like Kireji where it should turn the view of the reader from a line to the next. The Crystalline poem allows for the subjectivity of the poet and allows for the thoughts and feelings of the poet to be portrayed through the verse, unlike Haiku that is reserved to the image with objectivity and is inclined towards retaining the ego out of the verse.

A two line image poem, often with a title, in which euphony is the key factor. Each line may have 8 or 9 syllables to make a total of seventeen.

Example

Brian Strand

#3

My fingers reach to touch the sky
where swallows circle,then southwards fly.