FROM: Mouse of Zen Monday Published Mondays
Port Orleans Frog Quarter Haiku
How much, exactly, can you fit into a bite-size haiku? Well, if you're a master of the form, quite a lot - and that really is the point! JB Conway takes us south, as in the Deep South, with equal parts Princess Tiana and Virgil Tibbs.
The haiku theme for this month is the moons of June. We'll visit the Haunted Mansion, Port Orleans, the Japan Pavilion, and the Astro Orbiter. By moonlight.
It's not the Song of the South, but JB's poem today is certainly the Haiku of the South.
The swamp is there, magnolia trees, delta music, moonlit nights slow as molasses.
If you've read John Ball's book, In the Heat of the Night, or more likely, if you've seen the movie based on that book, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, then you'll catch the significance of JB's first line, which places his haiku - for that line only! - in Mississippi.
The rest of the haiku evokes Disney's The Princess and the Frog, with its New Orleans locale, a locale simulated at Disney World in the Port Orleans French Quarter resort.
And in the movie, Tiana and Naveen both turn into frogs, and both sing on the soundtrack.
What an abundance of meaning to pack into a little ol' haiku!
If you haven't bought JB's book, Mouse of Zen, and yet you come here each week to read his haikus, why do you torture yourself? Are you a masochist? (Or maybe a mouseochist?) Don't you know you can get all the haikus at once? In the book!
More: MOUSE OF ZEN MONDAY
Stuff Not to Skip
- Mouse of Zen
http://www.mouseofzen.com - Mouse of Zen on Lulu
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/mouse-of-zen/12190364 - Mouse of Zen on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Mouse-Zen-J-B-Conway/dp/0557242703 - Frontierland on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontierland