Haiku experiment, anyone with knowledge of the form have comment?

Question:My fictional poet character has decided to explore the haiku now, do any of these even come close to achieving the form and poetry at the same time?

This morning's sad song
came out of the radio;
Sunset on TV.

*

Nighttime, barren marsh
I stand under starry sky,
Time: product of Man.

*

Weep in black clothing,
Sunlight streams through bird-filled trees
Chirping joyfully.

*

Sun rises, then sets;
Your fragrance, musty essence
Intoxicates me.

I listed them in order of what I think is increasing quality but would appreciate any insight on the art and the form.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: My fictional poet character has decided to explore the haiku now, do any of these even come close to achieving the form and poetry at the same time?

This morning's sad song
came out of the radio;
Sunset on TV.

*

Nighttime, barren marsh
I stand under starry sky,
Time: product of Man.

*

Weep in black clothing,
Sunlight streams through bird-filled trees
Chirping joyfully.

*

Sun rises, then sets;
Your fragrance, musty essence
Intoxicates me.

I listed them in order of what I think is increasing quality but would appreciate any insight on the art and the form.

First, a disclaimer: I have only slight knowledge of the form. That said, I shall not refrain from offering my opinion. ;-)

You definitely show a knack for poetry. Are your verses good haiku? It depends how strict you want to be with the form. Personally, I feel that, since it's so undemanding in its basic structure, you should be as rigorous as you can with the rest of it: Here's an excerpt from wikipedia:

Possibly the most well-known of Japanese haiku is Bashō's "old pond" haiku:

古池や蛙飛込む水の音
This separates into on as:

furuike ya
(fu/ru/i/ke ya): 5
kawazu tobikomu
(ka/wa/zu to/bi/ko/mu): 7
mizu no oto
(mi/zu no o/to): 5
Roughly translated [3]:

old pond
a frog jumps
the sound of water
Haiku are written as three different lines with a distinct grammatical break between two of them, called a kireji, usually placed at the end of either the first or second line. In Japanese, there are actual kireji words, which act as a sort of spoken punctuation (for example, the "ya" at the end of Bashō's "furuike-ya" poem is a kireji). In English, kireji has no direct equivalent. Instead, English-language poets often use commas, dashes, elipses, or implied breaks to divide the three lines into two grammatical and imagistic parts. The purpose is to create a juxtaposition, which creates space for an implication as the reader intuits the relationship between the two parts.

To me, a haiku is above all, to use Wikipedia's word, imagistic. Two images and an intuited relationship. That means I actually don't like your last one much: "your fragrance, musty essence intoxicates me" is a statement more than an image. There's an image that goes along with it, of course, but you're expressing a thought, a relationship, not just conveying an image.

You are doing the juxtaposition of two things part, which is important. I understand some of them more than others. I like the second the most, probably because I understand it most.

There's probably always room for improvement, no matter how good a poem is. Short poems like these may be easier to tinker with. If you see a small change that could sharpen your point, don't hesitate to make it.

Tiny improvements
In delicate adjustments.
Slice of the scalpel.

(heh, that probably wasn't too good, eh?)
_____________________
Edit: re your last: sure it's about smell, but what I (and perhaps Russell) was saying is that it doesn't just describe an image--it makes a statement about it. "Intoxicant essence" would describe the fragrance; "your essence intoxicates me" tells us what it does to you, but only describes it indirectly.

I like the second to last one best. They aer all better than anyting I could write. It seems like you have the format and style down.

I would say the third one's my favourite, you've got the whole picture there, I think that's important in this form.

You've got the hang of the form as far as the syllable count goes, but the haiku form tends to be very visual and focuses on a single image. You've got "intoxicates me" in the fourth poem, I think my problem there is that it's not particularly visual as an image I'll give you an example to try and illustrate what I mean;

Wild-tangled graveyard,
silence dug into the hill;
a raven tills the earth.

It's not the greatest example, (it would be better if it started with the hill) but you see how the scene opens and then zooms in to the crow, I'm trying to grab the attention of the reader and then focus it, if you like, to give them a picture.
You don't have to zoom in, you could zoom out, play around with it, invent, have fun; you've made a good start here.