What do you think? Haiku or the American Sentence?

Dr. Sue Walker, the poet Laureate of Alabama, suggested a style of poetry called, "The American Sentence."  It's an alternative to the Japanese haiku.  She taught us this style during the National Writing Project Institute. 

Allen Ginsberg was a believer in condense, condense, condense-which is an Ezra Pound dictum.  Ginsberg thought the 17 syllables of the haiku were too limiting in its 5-7-5 syllable lines, making the haiku poem merely an exercise in counting, not feeling, and too arbitrary to be poetry.

Ginsberg's solutions, which first appear in his book Cosmopolitan Greetings, are his American Sentences: One sentence, 17 syllables, end of story.  It makes for a rush of a poem, and if you decide to do so, include the season and an aha! moment as in Japanese haiku. 

I went to Savannah, GA and Tybee Island for the 4th of July holiday.  This American sentence came to me as I sat on the sparkling beach.  Here it is:

My hair wisped in the wind as I looked at the haveanly clear, blue sky.

Written by:  Kristin Cox