will praying in Haiku produce a gated drum effect?

One of my favorite poets and persons (and cousins) is Ed Brickell.

I particularly admire his craft with Haiku.

I remember how when Peter Gabriel was recording his third album, he strictly enforced the discipline of "no cymbals." 

Ironically (or not), the album became the genesis (pun intended) of the revolutionary "gated drum" sound which eventually went hugely viral with the iconic and accidental  (in both senses of the term) "In the Air Tonight" drum fill on Phil Collins' first solo album.

Having worked previously with Eno (the "Enossification" effects on Genesis' "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" album), Gabriel may well have been inspired by Eno's "oblique strategies" of forbidding certain instruments or chords in songs, to see what unsolicited creativity would happen in the dare of the  discipline (see "Oblique Strategies")

Maybe Ed and other haikuists (heck, any artists, which includes everyone reading) can chime in:

What have you learned about/from forcing yourself to work within certain structures and limits? How has limiting the palette opened up liminal and larger space..and thin places?

As a heteroclite theologian who is ever  Pushing Toward The Unobvious..

 I also wonder/wander if in works of art pondering the divine, what unique anointing there is in limiting the palette and downsizing the arsenal/toolbox of words and wineskins.

I wonder how Ed's being a Zen practioner shapes the form and content of his art?

What might I learn about God, life and myself if I write/voice  my theologizing (laments, midrash and "reversed thunder")  prayers in Haiku?

I will find out soon..even if Anne Lammott's famous maxim about first drafts comes true.  One of these days, like Dave  the Zen Presbyterian, I can pray through guitar.  But before that, I will experiment with praying in the glossolalia of Haiku.

What would McLuhan say here?

Here is a Haiku (a HAIKU TRILOGY, no less, I like 3s) from late Methodist pastor Cynthia Langston Kirk , and a poem from Ed which pique my holy curiosity..

---------------------------------------

Lines in the sand

Deaths in the Sonoran desert

Divine lament

-

Child sentenced to death

Dying slowly in Auschwitz

God on the gallows

--

Rage upon anger

Exploded in Virginia Tech'

Come Holy Comfort

-Cynthia Langston Kirk, p, 102 in this book

--

Big Storm 

 

The dark in the west is deep -  

A rogue chunk of night  

Drifting like an iceberg. 

. 

The breeze, spiced with damp earth. 

Wind chimes blunder into each other. 

Thunder roots in the edges. 

 

Close behind this Gotterdammerung 

The sky turns a page of blue - 

A disappointing novel, 

Read in a single glance. 

 

 by Ed Brickell