Aaron of aanthems.com, recently reemerged from a long break from blogging, tried to register and post and somehow blacklisted himself from my blog. Good job, dude. Aaron is my blogdaddy, the first blogger apart from Anne I ever read, but Anne doesn’t count because I’ve known her since the fifth grade, peered over her shoulder one day in 2000 and said, “What’s a blog? Can I have one?”
In responding to a request I made of him in December 2001, he says:
Miss Lauren commanded, “write a haiku that encapsulates you.” I shot off the cuff, without much design or hemming. Now that I re-read it a couple of days later, I kinda like it.
These large, warm hands open
a shoulder, an ear, for you
find yourself within.She and I silently disagree whether “open” constitutes one or two syllables, but I have Merriam-Webster on my side. My psyche flushes at the thought of violating the Haiku rules.
Making others write haiku used to be a fond pasttime of mine. I still do it on occasion if someone says he or she is bored. The key is to always supply a topic for the poem: oneself, farticles, defenestration, etc.
And for the record, I maintain that “open” has two syllables. So there.
{ 5 comments }
Open indeed has two syllables. If you’re violating the haiku rules, that’s one thing, but I as far as I can tell, Merriam-Webster lists open as having two syllables… like this:
‘O-p&n
that little dash – means a syllable break. :)
Even if you don’t pronounce the schwa (represented by the ampersand in the reply above), I’m afraid the best you’re going to do is say that you have a syllabic [n] in the word — which still gives it two syllables.
If the [n] wasn’t syllabic at all, you either a) couldn’t pronounce the [p] or b) resume voicing for the [n]. Sorry :-P That was more of an answer than you wanted.
Nice quas-hai-ku tho. :)
Great. Bring in the linguists.
MW indicates their syllables both with a little dash and little dot, like: open·er or ad·jec·tive. They insert no dot for open.
Then again, I don’t know what Chuck’s talking about but he’s forcing me to belive it.
Sorry, aanthems, but I have to go with Lauren on this one.
You’re looking at the word “opener”, which is not the word “open”. M-W seems to suggest that opener is two syllables (ie, op-ner), and open is also two syllables: op-en.
The M-W Online shows the following:
O-p&n
Op-n&r
See how the syllable-breaking dash moves in the two examples?
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