Empty City Press

A common poetic structure in the wastes, the Haad-Miil poem is a bastardization of the more complex and formally rigorous Tluop-xi poetic form of the Empire. Consisting of five lines with a syllabic metrical pattern of 9-6-5-6-9, the Haad-Miil is mostly utilized as a quasi-oral poetic form, most often used as a way to mark the significance of a particular moment to those present. Conceptually, the form is supposed to represent the breadth of experience, melding past and future, joy and sorrow, to take in the world as an eternal space of struggling possibility and place it in the symbol of the lived experience of now. This is of course a simplification of the Tluop-xi mode, paring down the nuance of that form into something clear-cut and somewhat heavy-handed.  The Haad-Miil speaker is to guide the reader from two directions, two opposing forces, emotions, or viewpoints focused in the first and last line that are then reconciled or simply mingled in the center line. The atmosphere of Haad-Miil is typically one of melancholy or wistfulness, of wishing for something that cannot be. The ubiquity of the form has lead to its bastardization and subsequent usage as eulogy and non-sequitur. There are few true practitioners of the form in any truly literary or learned fashion, but many a Haad-Miil verse has been passed through oral cultural channels for generations, and may function as greeting, declaration, insult, or a way to pass the hours in reflection. Above all, and for scholars the primary reason the form has stood the test of time, the Haad-Miil serves as a form of expression unhindered by the many affiliations, obligations, and oaths that so enmesh life in the wastes. It represents the passion and life that thrive in the most desolate places. Presented here are the Haad-Miil that arose as a result of the events described in Kazak: 100 Blades.   

The Haad-Miil poetic mode is a fictional reimagining of the chinese yuefu iteration of poetry, a mingling of folk songs/tales in condensed form and the utilization of stylized 'personas' as recurring perspective. Specifically for the Haad-Miil fictional form, the notion of a character 'falling into legend and song' is the central component.  The Haad-Miil mode also borrows from the japanese waka tradition, not in the metrical patterns themselves, but the notion of making use of a strict metrical pattern and thematic base for the poetry itself--the stricture that forces a poet to not only take theme and image into account, but the history/lexicon of the form itself.