some people think
it’s just three or four lines
of stuff that doesn’t rhyme
I thought for a while
That it was five-seven-five
Doesn’t have to be.
A view of nature
Poetically given
Is a true haiku
I think it’s a bit subjective; I have a very hard time seeing how you can put any of these award-winning haiku in to a 1st-2nd-3rd ranking.
I recall reading about a breathtakingly beautiful best-haiku-ever that was…one word. It was ‘mist’ or ‘fog’ or ‘veil’ or something like that. :dubious:
I once knew a man
and he came from Nantucket
but you know the rest
I liked the top two winners from 2012. Thanks for the link. However, I should point out to the OP:
Mean Mister Mustard
has a thread of these short poems
[thread=553188]Here, I’ll hook you up[/thread]
Well, I wasn’t saying they aren’t enjoyable, many of the examples are very nice.
Some people try to get all seventeen syllables on just one line.
Some folks understand.
Some people don’t have a clue.
What more can I say?
I understand what the definition of haiku is. I can’t say I have ever understood the underlying point of it or why it is more important than any other random arrangement.
Haiku are easy,
but they might not make much sense.
Refrigerator.
The Japanese art
Of poems spare yet layered
Lost in translation
“I love catnip mice
That’s why I bite their heads off
They’re good for breakfast”
-Bucky Katt
The five-seven-five thing is basically a simplification bordering on a misunderstanding of what Japanese haiku are supposed to be. It’s true that in Japanese haiku, there’s a five-seven-five rule, but it’s not syllables. I forget the term for what is being counted, but it includes things that are not syllables, for example, the sound “-n.”
The point of it all was to create a very brief (usually just five or six words total) but surprising and insightful or revelatory image, generally of nature, generally with imagery evocative of a particular season.
Hence the sound-counting serves to help the poet create that effect. Also helping is an additional rule of haiku composition (not mentioned in middle school textbooks in the states) that the middle line ought to contain or end on some kind of twist–a break in the image or a change in topic or something along those lines that forces the reader to consider things in a new light.
It’s been suggested (I forget by whom but some famous poet or other) that English haiku shouldn’t follow a five/seven/five rule for syllables, but instead a two/three/two rule for stressed syllables.
With all that in mind, I once composed a haiku about the board game Go:
A final stone,
The rain falling outside,
and inside, the thunder.
I don’t like haiku.
I mean, really, what’s the point?
Shit don’t even rhyme!
I get an Issa haiku every day in the mail, and I find it quite meditative…
Aw! Frylock stole my thunder. It takes a while to look up morae, so I’m not going to bother. But I have done one with morae before in response to a thread, where I assumed every stressed syllable counted as 2.
Are the morae of haiku the same as the things that have characters associated with them?
And why do we use a Latin name for them? Surely the Japanese have some name for the same concept?
The moon hits your eye
It’s like a big pizza pie
THAT is a morae