Sketches from the Twin Cities Poetic Diversion (or drive version): License Plate Haiku Varié

By Geoffrey Dean 

During the warmer months of 2021, I started considering the possibilities for poetic realization suggested by the automobile license plates of Minnesota. The typical MN plate has six symbols—a series of three letters followed by three numbers, or vice versa. How might the information on an MN plate be interpreted as the structural basis of a haiku-like poem?
    The basic outlines seem clear enough to me now: three lines, with each of the plate letters mapping vertically (in order, top to bottom) to form the start of each line, and the number of syllables per line determined by the numbers and their order on the plate. Here is a hypothetical sample to illustrate these principles:

Plate number: 123 MAP
  Most
  Apples
  Please people

    I had been spotting plates where the letters formed a word, and such plates seemed then to be everywhere I looked. At first I tried a different application of the letters that had them moving across each line, requiring each line (where possible) to have exactly three words, and for the license plate letters to start those words. A sample of this approach:

AWE 981
  A wonder extraordinary
  Action willfully executed
  Air

    If capitalized letters are even used in this type of setting, they bring out a repetition of the plate’s first letter while leaving the plate’s letter sequence more hidden.^* This particular plate led me to question how best to deal with low syllable counts of one and especially zero. I found myself “cheating” by not including the E in the one-syllable line count in this “vertical” version of AWE 981:

Across the plains we trucked toward you
While others tracked the moon and sun—
Eclipse

Last month, the snows of the past winter finally forgotten and the license plates again reliably readable, I resumed my experiments, still thinking to exclude any plate that didn’t include a recognizable three-letter word. MUD 757 kept me occupied for a while as I came back to it day after day:

Morning ramble in the rain
Up away I gaze—
Dampened dirt and squishy shoes

Murky marshes, squishy sidewalks
Unseen dangers of
Deepened puddles—splash or splat?

March along a squishy path
Up ahead, puddles—
Detour or Jump? Make a splash!

Mask packed thick for beauty’s sake
Unrelenting sun
Drink of the moment—refresh

Morning song to rain’s patter—
Unearthed worms snatched up,
Delivered by mom bird’s beak

Murky marsh in morning mist
Under darkened sky—
Dread hangs heavy in the air

Mysterious mountain trails
Under bursting clouds—
Drenched, we jump puddles and laugh

Marveled with the home team crowd
Unforgiving ump’s
Dirty home plate decisions

Mother sings a lullaby
Upon her lap, babe
Dozes sweetly—a fly alights

Murmur of a long-lost land
Untouched by our own
Digital hum—the ear’s dream

Musefilled minis form their rows—
Unison steps they
Dance, bodies boldly bending

Music sounds from far away—
Unusual hues
Discordant to ears untuned

    This sort of endless recycling of the same plate wasn’t really what I had in mind—I wanted to quickly choose a plate, craft a single poem, and move on. But even finding a plate that “spoke” to me was taking too long, days even. The number of word-forming letter sequences seemed to diminish in inverse proportion to the degree of intensity with which I sought them out during commutes. I wanted to streamline the process. Possibly inspired by the “one-a-day” Wordle game, I attempted to nail down some firmer license-plate haiku rules:

1. Poeticize exactly one license plate per day.
2. The daily plate will be the first non-neighbor plate you see and remember, whether the letters spell a word or not. 
3. The poem will have a maximum of three lines. 
4. Each line of the poem will start with the corresponding license-plate letter. 
5. Each line will have a syllable count determined by the corresponding license-plate number.
6. Options for zero: 
1. Avoid plates with zeros.
2. Include the plate letter corresponding to the zero as a placeholder at the start of a blank line.
3. Options a and b are all I’ve got so far.
7. Options for one:
   1. Use the corresponding plate letter as a stand-alone word.
   2. Use that letter as the first letter of the only word in that line (i.e., let 1 refer to the number of words, not syllables).
   3. Use that letter as the first letter of all words in that line (i.e., let 1 trigger an alliteration requirement for that line).

To simplify things even further to get to a “road trip version” that everyone in the car could play, I downgraded from a poem to random three-word phrases (of any number of syllables) using the 3 license-plate letters. This approach was suggested in part by an especially nonsensical early license-plate haiku of mine that ended up being a series of three unrelated phrases using words beginning with each plate letter in turn:

AFT 765
  Acidic fruit trampoline
  Apoplectic fly twerk
  Authentic front teeth

    Here’s what I’ve got for this so far for the road trip version:

1. Passengers take turns reading a random plate out loud. 
2. Passenger who reads the plate chooses 1 of the numbers.
3. Passenger to reader’s left (or right, doesn’t matter, just choose a consistent direction) has to create that number of three-word phrases (no set number of syllables) using the plate letters in order as the starting letters of the words, and to say them out loud. 
4. Once the phrases have been shared, that passenger now finds the next plate, and the passenger to their left (or right) creates the phrases.
5. Before starting to play, decide:
1. Lightning rounds or Slow rounds (lightning = timed, like Boggle; slow = could take forever, like Scrabble)?
2. Anything goes (nonsense phrases allowed) or Grammar police (words must have clear relationship to each other, forming some kind of unity or thought)?

   From these suggestions it might be rightly suspected that the road trip version has yet to be tested, and many refinements will inevitably be needed before I release the board game version (patent pending, no driver’s licenses required).
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* In this age of automatic license plate readers, I feel compelled to issue a disclaimer that the above activities are not intended to cover for any type of surveillance or attempt to obtain private information about anyone. I make no claim as to the legality or illegality of the activities I have described.

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean