One Last Comment on False Memory -- and Haiku

One last comment on False Memory.  I want to thank anyone who added a comment to my post on haiku.  I still will not pretend to understand it, but they were insightful.  But of all the comments, I think the one most useful to me is that classical haiku is very direct and literal in its descriptions, and eschews simile and metaphor.  After all, it seems fair to say that the real essence of English poetry -- and, indeed, Western poetry in general -- is not so much lavish language as metaphor and other figurative language.  My quote from The Highwayman contains a metaphor per line.  My quote from Skaters of Ghost Lake contains a simile in the first couple and a metaphor in the second.  And "Ice shooting fangs forth, sudden -- like spears" packs a metaphor and a simile into a single line.

When I made my youthful attempts at haiku, almost invariably they would contain some sort of figurative language, like comparing the sunset to a water color painting.  It would be an attempt at vividness, but nothing like real haiku.  And, looking back at Ahriman's attempts at haiku, it seems to me that the ones I liked best were not so much the ones that copied the lavishness of English poetry, but the ones that used metaphor.

Moonlight on the water
Eyes brimming ponds of rain
Dark fish in the mind

Seems like a much more poetic description of a beautiful woman (Susan) crying than:

Tear-damp flush of face
White cotton so sweetly curved
Bare knees together.

Or

Her blue eyes seeking
His wisdom gives her vision
Teacher and student

Never seemed very poetic to me.  I did better with:

Black hair, black attire
Blue eyes shine like Tiffany
Her light, too, a lamp

That starts to seem poetic because of its rather light and delicate use of figurative language, but still not so grant as:

Sizzling passion eyes
Simmer in broth of eros
My juicy pork chop.

Okay, so pork chop is generally considered in bad taste to use to describe a woman.  But my general impression is that it is probably true that the haiku in the novel that appealed to me most were not so much the most lavish ones after all, as the ones that made good use of metaphor.  I should also add that Dean Koontz, whatever else I may think of him, gives excellent, highly vivid descriptions of the scene and has a positive genius for setting a mood, even when he does not use haiku.

Whether I can learn to appreciate a poetry based on literalism remains to be seen.