I wrote this after visiting the Charleston Artist Guild Gallery last night for their “Painted Palettes” Silent Auction. The Charleston Artist Guild will also be participating in tonights French Quarter Art Walk (which occur every first Friday of the month) from 5pm to 8pm.

The shuffle of feet
Bring the old ones out of their
Faded lawn Chairs
Eyes twinkling
Behind Dusty Frames.

Colors trumpet so they almost
Spring canvas and wood
Off of walls
On their own accord.

Scratches made on paper
Finalizing a well
Thought out
Decision.

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Robert Behre is one of the most talented and well-rounded men you’ll meet in Charleston. He writes the P&C’s always-illuminating Monday column on architecture and preservation and covers practically everything else as a reporter.

But his hidden talent? Robert is the staff’s undisputed master of light verse and sly wit, and he has been for years.

His latest offerings:

It’s hard to make Spo
Ku about the Memminger
Auditorium

It’s also hard to
make a Spoku about the
Carolina Choc—

Water bottles are
no longer the greenest choice.
Correctly, I thirst.

Get off the damn floor,
Child for whom I just purchased
Expensive ticket

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We’ve received another set of Spo-kus (that’s Spoleto hiaku to all you new kids) from reader Cecil Wilson. These always help us get in the mood…

Champagne was flowing
in the elegant garden
but the cast was shy.

More after the jump…

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Tags: reader verse, Spo-ku, Spoleto

Ida Becker, the blogosphere’s grande dame of Spoleto social coverage, started running haiku poetry on festival subjects last month. It reminded me of the late 1990s when I ran the city desk for The P&C.

One of my stress-relief tactics was to give reporters little creative challenges, more or less for the hell of it, and one spring we came up with the idea that it would be fun to write haiku about Spoleto. We called them “Spo-ku,” at the time, but eventually the hyphen disappeared and the word picked up an “s” in the plural. Unfortunately, the records of that group exercise were lost in the conversion to a new content management system.

For my money, the best Spoku of all time was written by reporter/editor/architecture critic Robert Behre, who despite his many notable accomplishments is best known to his friends as a master of light verse. This one, written in our first year of holding this prize-less contest of wit, captures so much of the Spoleto experience:

Gin Vermouth Olives
Pate on tasty toast points
Have you seen Nigel?

But we weren’t finished there…

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