Sept haï-kaïs "La petite tortue ...", is only seventeen measures long—the number of syllables in a Japanese haiku. Alexis Roland-Manuel remarked on this "mélodie": "Do not let your modesty make you forget a certain fable by La Fontaine. You hurry slowly, perhaps, but none of your steps are wasted. How many hares envy you!" The harmony is pricked with fine, expressive dissonances. For the third "mélodie", "Le coq ...", the instruments "peck" the melody with appoggiaturas in a spirit similar to that in Ravel's "Histoires naturelles" (1906). According to Andrieu, "Maurice Delage's composition is simple and refined; the composer stays ever attentive
Strugnell's Haiku Strugnell's Haiku Strugnell's Haiku is a collection of three songs for voice and piano by the composer Colin Matthews, set to haiku poems by Jason Strugnell, an alter ego of the poet Wendy Cope. The texts cover the angst of living in South London, the abode of the fictional Strugnell, who lived in Tulse Hill and worked at Norwood library, and whose work shows the influence of a number of poets, including Ted Hughes, Craig Raine and James Elroy Flecker. The poems were originally published in Cope's collection "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis." The haiku touch on various experiences in