Recently, The Professor posted his first batch of haiku; they were constructed via the processes of appropriation, sampling and stealing [“The Professor on Poetry: Appropriated, Sampled, Stolen,” 10 June 2014]. The Professor presented 13 haiku that had, in one way or another, originated in the writings of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

Now The Professor has a new group of 10 haiku that use specific lines from rock-and-roll, rap and rhythm and blues songs as their raw material. As always, constructive redeployment, displacement, memory and juxtaposition were the key criteria. In this sense, the haiku presented here use the same methodologies that the twelve artists, craftspeople and designers used in The Professor’s earlier book Manufractured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects and this explains the title of this post [“The Professor: Manufractured Haiku”].

Why, The Professor asks for the umpteenth time, would we make everything out of new materials when there is already so much around us that we can reuse and recycle? As stated in the initial haiku post [and reiterated here], the creative struggle is not as much with matters of form or function as it is with how to best make meaning, and that’s the way it is with whether we’re talking about objects or words—and that’s why they call him The Professor.

One step at a time,

Jig-saw jazz and get-fresh flow—

Like a sound you wear

 

A night of wonder
,

I gave my secrets away—

You can still stand tall

 

Brother where art thou,

Hanging out is always hype—

Let’s see you get loose

 

Well I won’t back down,

Every beat of your heartbreak
—

A bird in my brain

 

Let the good times roll,

Anger is an energy—

That’s the big idea

 

Burning down the house,

For neither love nor money—

California

 

I’ll do some driving,

Follow me, don’t follow me—

Hidden mystery

 

Look death in the eye,

We’re not going out like that—

Odd fascination

 

Catch the bird movement,

It’s the sunshine of your love—

Or, in gods we nest

 

Rotten oasis,

What’s your name, who’s your Daddy—

I’m sure he meant well

©2014