Richard Wilbur’s “Little Experiment”
Leslie Monsour
Have you written a rhymed haiku poem lately? I don’t mean a single rhymed haiku, but a stanzaic poem composed in the form Richard Wilbur originated with “Thyme Flowering among Rocks,” published in his 1969 collection Walking to Sleep. It wasn’t until the start of the 21st century that Wilbur renewed his “experiment” and began producing such gems as “Zea,” “A Measuring Worm,” and “Sir David Brewster’s Toy,” collecting fourteen or fifteen rhymed haiku poems in Mayflies and Anterooms. In our workshop, we’ll study and discuss Wilbur’s examples and try our hand at the form he brought into existence; and, who knows, we might even challenge ourselves to a rhymed tanka!
