I can safely say that last month’s contest was the most difficult to judge. And that’s not just because I’ve been busy compulsively irrigating my ear canals in preparation for Take It In The Ear Day—no, it’s because so many of this month’s entrants really showed their stuff, making our jobs a lot harder than we anticipated.
Still, we had to choose a Winnar—such is the nature of contests—so we now present this month’s Free T-Shirt Contest winner: Marissa Perna, with her tenuously medical entry:
How many people want to inject Fantastic Bonanza directly into their circulatory systems? Show of hands!
I cannot stress enough how incredibly close this contest was. You guys owe it to yourselves to gander at this month’s other entrants, if only to see what Graffiti is capable of these days.
Enough words! It is time for the December Contest to show itself:
You know what’s ridiculously simple to write? A haiku. Think about it! Just five syllables, and then seven—and then five more! And you’re done! I mean, yeah, there’s the problem of conveying nuggets of profound wisdom or sublime natural wonder in such a limited frame, but come on—who does that? Seriously!
So here’s your challenge, Bonanza Cadets: write a haiku that is somehow related to Fantastic Bonanza! No need to use the words “Fantastic Bonanza” in your entry, of course. You could even write about, say, Conezor or Joe or something if you really wanted—it just has to be Fantastic Bonanza-related!
Post your poetic masterpieces in the comments section and we promise to read all of them all of the time. Well—not quite. Don’t forget your email address, either—otherwise we can’t inform you of your prestigious win!
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no clothes on my skin
i will not last the winter
without that free shirt
What you really ask for is a Faux-ku. Any serious poet, such as myself, Fee Waybill, knows that while Japanese Haiku may be 5-7-5, not so in English necessarily. For instance, consider Basho’s masterpiece:
Old Pond …
Frog Jumps In
Water’s Sound
Not indeed 5-7-5. English Haikuists who are not *banal* have several methods of truely translating Haiku:
1. Affirm a 3-5-3 structure, which is a good approximation for 5-7-5 in Japanese, seeing as Japanese carries far less information per syllable.
2. Follow a loose 3-5-3 model but do not adhere to formal structural requirements, as these requirements are only meaningful in Japanese and do not apply to a language such as English.
3. Rather than conceiving of the Haiku as syllables, think of it as accented beats, in a pattern of 2-3-2. Unaccented beats are ignored.
I hope you have learned something today, you degenerate ignoramuses (specifically Joe, whose culinary and musical tastes are prfoundly disappointing, but more specifically that foul greek known as Greg). Now that I have gotten you in the mood to truly appreciate my genius I will share with you my own, properly conceived Haiku:
Stoic Bear
Your moustache leads us
To wisdom
The octopus tree
what does it do in winter?
Use chromatophores?
‘Fee Waybill’: in order to qualify for this contest, please provide the Japanese original that you so masterfully translated.
Boy, does my tooth hurt.
Better get that oil drill.
Who knows what we’ll find?
Happy to oblige. Careful scrutiny will no doubt find it syllabalically correct.
静かなくま
あなたの髭は私達を導く
知恵に
If you have a slavish devotion to the convention of 5-7-5 you can retranslate. Much as “Old Pond” can be translated:
“An old silent pond…
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.”
In a similar way my you could retranslate my work:
“Ah! The Stoic Bear
Truly your moustache leads us
To profound wisdom”
Quality T-shirts
Perhaps one day you will be
As good as sliced bread
If a t-shirt could
be a haiku, your t-shirts
Would not be this one