Senryu and Haiku Compared

Senryū (pronounced, sen-ryoo)  are 3-line, 17-syllable (5-7-5) Japanese poems. I know that sounds like haiku, but, unlike haiku, these poems focus on human nature, irony, and humor rather than nature. They often highlight life's daily foibles with wit. 

Senryū comment on aspects of everyday life, often in a humorous or ribald fashion. These were usually composed by townsfolk and submitted to poetry competitions run by professional judges or tenja. The best would be awarded prizes and compiled in anthologies. The most famous tenja was Karai Senryū (1718-1790), and it is from him that the poems take their name.

Two senryu by Karai Senyru

I grab the robber
and find I’ve caught
my own son.

As a man fond of both
loose women and senryu —
please remember me.

Some masters of haiku also wrote senryū.

A woman showing
a charcoal-seller his face,
in a mirror
  -  Buson

In those three lines, you should expect the occassional surprise.

The stone saint
is kissed on the mouth
by a slug.

Haiku is described as “17 syllables” in English because English speakers substituted syllables for the Japanese unit on (also called mora), which is the actual building block of Japanese. A haiku is traditionally 17 morae, not 17 syllables. 

In comparison, senryu uses the same 3-line 5/7/5 pattern, but it does not include a seasonal word (kigo) and uses a more colloquial language. The last line holds the meaning of the poem and is funny or surprising, a bit like the punchline of a joke. 

A butterfly
that goes straight
has free time.

No matter how
sorry you are,
the teacup is broken.

Ecstatic at being
set free,
the bird collides with a tree.

Watching a plane
the kid playing third base
misses the ball
     — Sandy J. Anderson

combing my hair—
the face in the mirror
is my mother's
  - Sharon Peeples

I’m told I look young
That’s how I know
I’m not young anymore

It is difficult for an English speaker to "see" the morae. Take the Japanese word for book: “hon.” This word has one syllable for us but two morae, the “ho” and the “n.”

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Eating Salad Drunk: Haikus for the Burnout Age

Here's a poetic oddity. Eating Salad Drunk: Haikus for the Burnout Age by Comedy Greats is a collection of haiku written by comedians. The contributors include Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Ian Black, Aubrey Plaza, Margaret Cho, Maria Bamford, Ray Romano, Aparna Nancherla, Ziwe Fumudoh, Chris Gethard, Sasheer Zamata, Colin Mochrie, and Zach Woods.

I’m huge on Twitter.
―An ancient proverb that means
Lonely in real life.

   ~ Joel Kim Booster

The forward to the book points out that posts on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and probably most social media tend to be short. A few words, possibly devoid of "proper" grammar and structure or seconds rather than minutes of vide. Brevity rules. So, one might expect that short poetry forms, like haiku, would also be popular. 

Jokes are also typically something funny pared down to its essence. Asking comedians to write haiku sounds like it might work. I'm not sure about the "burnout age."  

My girlfriend and I
have a lot in common
genetically

   ~ Martin Urbano

The book is nicely illustrated with black and white drawings by New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake.

I limit myself
to one cup of coffee each
five to ten minutes.

   ~ Alyssa Limperis

The book is probably more of the kind you buy as a gift, only semi-serious about the poetry, for your poetry friends. All the sales proceeds go towards Comedy Gives Back, a nonprofit that provides mental health, medical, and crisis support resources for comedians. 

Seems like a good Hanukah, Christmas or new Year's gift for a poetry (haiku) friend and it gives to charity. maybe you can write it off as charitable. (Check with your tax advisor firts. ;-) 

The collection was curated by Gabe Henry, manager of the popular Brooklyn comedy venue Littlefield.

Unicorns are loved
But narwhals really exist
And nobody cares 

   ~ Liz Magee

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Walking in Soseki's Snow Valley

Image: Kanenori

Snow Valley

by MUSŌ SOSEKI, translated by W. S. MERWIN AND SŌIKU SHIGEMATSU

Each drifting snowflake

             falls nowhere

                          but here and now

Under the settling flowers of ice

             the water is flowing

                          bright and clear

The cold stream

             splashes out

                          the Buddha’s words

Startling

             the stone tortoise

                          from its sleep

These poems in Narrative magazine are excerpted from Sun at Midnight: Poems and Letters (Copper Canyon Press), the first translation into English of the work of Muso Soseki.

Soseki was a thirteenth-century Zen roshi and founder of the rock garden. The poems are excellent reading for other poets, gardeners, and students of Zen.  

Musō Soseki (1275–1351), born ten years after Dante, became the most famous Zen monk of his time. He advised and taught several emperors, as well as more than thirteen thousand students. 

All on my own I’m happy

            in the unmapped landscape

                        inside the bottle

my only friend

            is this

                        wisteria cane

Last night

            we stayed up talking

                        so late

that I’m afraid

            I was overheard

                        by the empty sky

In his old age, Musō withdrew from court to devote himself to Buddha and to cultivate the Zen gardens for which he is remembered. At his death, he left behind an enormous body of poetry and prose. In honor of his profound influence on Japanese culture, he was renamed Musō Kokushi, “national Zen teacher,” by Emperor Go-Daigo.

Toki-no-Ge (Satori Poem)

Year after year

I dug in the earth

looking for the blue of heaven

only to feel

the pile of dirt

choking me

until once in the dead of night

I tripped on a broken brick

and kicked it into the air

and saw that without a thought

I had smashed the bones

of the empty sky

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Prompt: Haiku Sequence

These past few weeks I have had a hard time focusing on any sustained reading, so I Have returned to an anthology of haiku. Most people are familiar with the form and the 5-7-5 syllable structure. Those three lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and another 5 syllable line are not always maintained.

In Japanese, haiku does use those 17 syllables but instead counts sound. We would count the word “haiku” as two syllables in English, but it is three sounds in Japanese (ha-i-ku). 

This month we are using the haiku form with a strict 5-7-5 syllables. We will also follow several other form "rules." Classic haiku is nature-based and often seasonal. No rhymes. Classical haiku also employs a cutting word (kireji in Japanese) that makes a verbal punctuation mark that separates the typically two juxtaposed images of the poem. In English, we don't have kireji so poets sometimes use a dash to make a pause so that readers can reflect on the connection between the two parts. That a good idea because a haiku can be read and digested too quickly.

Translations of Japanese haiku into English vary greatly. There is a poem by the master Matsuo Basho’s (1644-1694) that reads in Japanese as:

Furuike ya

kawazu tobikomu

mizu no oto

I found many translations of this famous frog poem. The most literal one I found is not 5-7-5.

old pond

frog leaps —

sound of the water

Here are two other translations:

mossy pond;

frog leaping in—

splash!

when the old pond

gets a new frog

it’s a new pond

This is a version described as "translated as a Zen koan”

the bungling frog

leaped for the pond, but landed

in Basho’s brain

Our haiku prompt this month is to write a sequence of 3 or more related poems. I have seen several variations on this kind of sequence. It can be 3 poems on the same thing. I have seen poems connected by using the last word of one as the first word of the next (still possibly connected by theme) and several poems constructed using the same words in new constructions. 

As a model, I chose three spring poems by Basho that are connected by the season but also by blossoms which are very often used in haiku to indicate spring. These are my own translation and I have adhered to the 5-7-5 form. (Note: "ume" means plum)

today they begin 

selling sake and ume  -

I smell the blossoms

all four of my bowls

for noon meal are not perfect - 

cherry blossom rain

the ume blossom

perfume is taken by wind  

into the cold winter

Submission Deadline: May 31, 2020

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Prompt: Summer Haiku

Oiran in Summer Kimono - Attributed to Hosoda Eishi (Japan, 1756-1829) - via Wikimedia

While we are on vacation this month, we are offering a different prompt and submission option. Here we are going to give you a brief summer haiku prompt and ask that if you write a poem to the prompt that you post it below as a comment. All comments on this blog require approval, so there will still be some gentle screening of submissions, but let's assume that everyone can follow the simple rules, will post and will be approved.

We have written here in the past about haiku more than a dozen times, and had specific posts and prompts about spring, autumn and winter haiku. Somehow, summer was overlooked. This month we remedy that.

The haiku form doesn't get the respect it deserves. It seems so simple that it is often used with children as a first formal poetry assignment. But good haiku is not that easy to write.

People notice that many famous haiku poems don't seem to follow the rules we usually hear for haiku verse: three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. That is both because the classic Chinese and Japanese poets of haiku were not working with syllables and because in translation to English the syllabication is usually ignored.

We will ask you to follow that 5-7-5 in your poems, but perhaps more importantly are some of the other "rules" for haiku.

Most classic haiku follow the culture and influence of Buddhism in the way that the poems emphasize a single moment.

Most haiku focus on something in nature.

In the traditional form, they contain either a direct or indirect reference to a season that turns the reader's attention to the passage of time. They often do this by using a seasonal word rather than naming the season. That seasonal word is called kigo (KEY-GO). In the examples below, the cricket and firefly suggest summer.

Here are a few examples:


The cool breeze.
With all his strength
The cricket.
      ~  ISSA


This warm river
I walk across it
holding my sandals
      ~  BUSON


This hot summer night.
The dream and real
are same things.
     ~  TAKAHAMA KYOSHI


Even a woodpecker
wouldn’t crack the tea hut.
in the summer grove.

Their own fires
are on the trees
fireflies around the house with flowers.
     ~  BASHO


Post your own summer haiku as a comment to this post.

Firefly by  Shoen Uemura - via Wikimedia

Prompt: Haibun Combines Prose and Haiku

This month we look at a short Japanese poetry form called the haibun.  The haibun (translated as "haikai writings" is a form that combines prose and haiku.

Haibun poems are used to write autobiographies, diaries, essays, prose poems, and very short stories. It was used as a kind of travel journal when it was first used by the 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō. It was a form he popularized. He wrote haibun as travel accounts. The most famous are in  Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Interior).

Haibun continued to be written by later haikai poets such as Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa and Masaoka Shiki. 

Not all of Bashō's haibun are devoted to travel. They are also character sketches, landscape scenes, and occasional poems to honor a specific patron or event. His "Hut of the Phantom Dwelling" is a quite long prose essay followed by the haiku:

Among these summer trees, 
a pasania- 
something to count on 

(A pasania is a tree species of Asia, sometimes called in English a "stone oak" because of its very hard acorn-like nuts.)

Traditional haibun typically took the form of a short, precise prose description of a place, person or object, or a diary of a journey or other events in the poet's life, followed by a related haiku.

Haibun is now written worldwide, and the form has been adapted into different variations. The basic rules for the haibun are simple.

1. Unlike haiku, haibun begins with a title. 
2. The prose portion is terse, descriptive, and written in the first person singular. 
3. It is in the present moment. Imagine the experience is occurring now, not in the past.
4. Although this is prose, it is poetic and understated, with all excessive words eliminated. 
5. The accompanying haiku follows the traditional rules of that form. 
6. The subject of the haiku does not repeat, quote, or explain the prose, but reflects some aspect of the prose with a detail that is more of a juxtaposition — different yet somehow connected. That connection can be a surprising revelation for the reader.

I was in a workshop this past year with the poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil where we wrote haibun. Aimee has written several articles on haibun and gives a more detailed look at the rules of haibun - although she admits that she is "not one to stay close and straight to any particular poetry 'rules'."

She told us that although Bashō coined the word haibun for the form as it is used today, it already existed in Japan without that name as a kind of preface to poems and as mini-lyric essays. He wrote a guideline for the form and Aimee points out that he was quite concerned with aware (pronounced ah-WAR-ay), a term for the spirit of haiku or the "quality of certain objects to evoke longing, sadness, or immediate sympathy."

In "Don’t Bring Me to the Fireworks, The Fox-Wife Asks," by Jeannine Hall Gailey, we have a modern-day haibun. I discovered Gailey's poetry in an article Nezhukumatathil wrote which includes another one of her fox-wife poems.

Don’t Bring Me to the Fireworks, The Fox-Wife Asks

They hurt my ears, make me run in circles. Under their chemical light you might see my non-human face, the tail I hide beneath skirts. In the city, under mercury vapor, you never see me clearly. I prefer the woods, the quiet howl of mosquitoes, of cicadas. Build me a hut of mud where we never see the stars, too bright. Bring me fans painted with cranes and peonies, poetry folded into birds. Don’t leave me in the crowd, my nose assaulted by too many scents. Let us stay far from others tonight, my love. Our celebrations will be fur and paw, hand to chest. Let the fireworks with their dizzy ghost spiders whine in the distance, keep me here, bring me silk kimonos the color of bark and dirt to nest in.

Keep the copper smoke
and saltpeter, the dim trails
of chrysanthemums in the sky.

That poem is from Gailey's collection, She Returns to the Floating World, which explores motifs in Japanese folk tales:, persona poems spoken by characters from animé and manga, mythology, and fairy tales. The story of the kitsune, or fox-woman, is one that occurs throughout the book.

This month's prompt is a haibun following the simplified and traditional six rules stated above.

The submission deadline is the night of the New Moon, August 14, 2015.

Further Reading On Haibun

• haibuntoday.com has a good selection of contemporary haibun. Two you might look at are "Night Fishing" and "Frozen."
  
• naturewriting.com has a good article on writing haibun

Writing the Day

Writing the Day was the name I chose for a new daily practice I started for 2014. It wasn't a New Year Resolution, and it wasn't totally original.  I want to write a poem each day.

William Stafford is the poet who inspired this daily practice the for me. Stafford wrote every day of his life from 1950 to 1993. He left us 20,000 pages of daily writings that include early morning meditations, dream records, aphorisms, and other “visits to the unconscious.”

It’s not that I don’t already write every day. I teach and writing is part of the job. I do social media as a job and for myself. I work on my poetry. I have other blogs. But none of them is a daily practice or devoted to writing poems.

When Stafford was asked how he was able to produce a poem every morning and what he did when it didn’t meet his standards, he replied, “I lower my standards.”

I like that answer, but I know that phrase “lowering standards” has a real negative connotation. I think Stafford meant that he allows himself some bad poems and some non-poems, knowing that with daily writing there will be eventually be some good work.

I wanted to impose some form on myself each day. I love haiku, tanka and other short forms, but I decided to create my own form for this project.

I call the form ronka – a somewhat egotistical play on the tanka form.

And that will be our short prompt for this short month.

These poems are meant to be one observation on the day. It might come upon waking. It might come during an afternoon walk, or when you are alone in the night.The poems should come come from paying close attention to the outside world from earth to sky or from inside – inside a building or inside you.

People know haiku as three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. But that’s an English version, since Japanese doesn’t have syllables.

The tanka form consists of five units (often treated as separate lines when Romanized or translated) usually with the following pattern of 5-7-5-7-7.

For my invented ronka form, there are 5 lines, each having 7 words without concern for syllables. Like traditional tanka and haiku, my form has no rhyme. You want to show rather than tell. You want to use seasonal words - cherry blossoms, rather than “spring.”

It's hard for Western writers to stay out of their poems - lots of "I" - but ronka have fewer people walking about in the poem.

The poems are just 5 lines, but you can certainly write several on a single theme and chain them together renga style.

For examples, there are some on our main site and all my ronka poems so far are on the Writing the Day website. I look forward to you outdoing me at my own form.

Submission deadline: February 28, 2014

Cherry Blossom Haiku and the Seasons

HAIKU BY ISSA

Under the cherry-blossoms
none are
utter strangers.

Cherry blossoms in evening.
Ah well, today also
belongs to the past.


Kigo is another aspect of traditional Japanese haiku, although it is not always present in modern and non-Japanese haiku. Kigo words are those associated with a particular season. It is a tradition that goes back to the mid-8th century in Japanese poetry and culture.

Rather than say the name of a season, it would usually be alluded to by kigo words, such as cherry blossoms to indicate spring.

In haiku, winter is traditionally the time of grief, distance and serenity, and might be indicated by "snow," "ice" or "bare tree."

Summer haiku often invoke warmth and heat, love and also rage or lust. Kigo words like rice planting, peonies, moths, fireflies, ants and mosquitos or fireworks or swimming could all indicate summer.

crossing the river -
how pleasing with sandals
in my hand!

even after falling
its image still stands -
the peony flower

clinging to the bell
he dozes so peacefully
this new butterfly
                ~ Buson

Autumn in haiku often depicts decay, the paranormal (ghosts and such), suspicion, regret, loss, and endings. The Moon, shadows and seasonal plants like persimmons and apples or insects like crickets could all indicate autumn.

In an old pond
a frog ages
while leaves fall

goodbye, will go
alone down Kiso road
old as autumn
              ~ Buson

In the Japanese calendar, seasons traditionally followed the lunisolar calendar with the solstices and equinoxes at the middle of a season. So, the kigo words traditionall used may not match your own calendar of seasonal events in nature. The traditional Japanese seasons are Spring: 4 February–5 May; Summer: 6 May–7 August; Autumn: 8 August–6 November; Winter: 7 November–3 February.

Spring haiku is often written with words that connote youth, innocence and infatuation.Animals used in spring haiku include frogs, skylarks, swallows, and songbird songs. Plants for spring haiku could be azalea, wisteria, and especially cherry blossoms. In fact, cherry blossom viewing (hanami) is so common that just mentioning blossoms (hana) would probably mean cherry blossoms.


HAIKU BY BASHO

The oak tree stands
noble on the hill even in
cherry blossom time

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!

Unknown spring --
Plum blossom
Behind the mirror.

With plum blossom scent,
this sudden sun emerges
along a mountain trail

Very brief -
Gleam of blossoms in the treetops
On a moonlit night.

From among the peach trees
blooming everywhere,
the first cherry blossoms.

A lovely spring night
suddenly vanished while we
viewed cherry blossoms

From every direction
cherry blossom petals blow
into Lake Biwa

Kannon's tiled temple
roof floats far away in clouds
of cherry blossoms
            (Kannon is the Bodhisattva of Compassion)

From all these trees –
in salads, soups, everywhere –
cherry blossoms fall

But not all blossoms come in spring, so when Basho writes -
Along the roadside
blossoming wild roses
in my horse’s mouth
he would mean it is late spring, possibly early summer.

Referencing a lily, lotus flower, orange blossoms, or sunflowers would mean summer.

Colored leaves would mean autumn, and fallen or dry leaves would indicate winter.

SPRING HAIKU BY BUSON

When Yosa Buson writes about plum blossoms, we know it is spring, and the cold that remains tells us it is early spring.

In nooks and corners
cold remains -
flowers of the plum

no bridge
and the sun going down -
spring currents

A woman
Reading a letter by moonlight -
Pear blossoms

Drinking up the clouds
it spews out cherry blossoms -
Yoshino Mountain.

In the moonlight,
the color and scent of wisteria
seems far away.

Pure white plum blossoms
slowly begin to turn
the color of dawn

National Haiku Writing Month

This month is the third annual National Haiku Writing Month.  National Haiku Writing Month takes place every February—the shortest month for the shortest genre of poetry.

The logo on the event website is a “No 5-7-5” sign to emphasize that haiku in English does not need to be syllabic lines of 5, 7 and 5.

I came across a post by John J. Dunphy. He owns a used book store called Second Reading Alton, Illinois. He was looking into a copy of The Best American Poetry 1991.

There were some haiku in the collection. Well, poems called "haiku."  A group of haiku by David Trinidad really bothered him. They were haiku based on 1960s TCV comedies like The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan's Island. That sounds pretty lame but that's not what bothered him.

Each haiku is just declarative sentence that has been broken into that three-line, 5-7-5 false form. As Dunphy says, "Cramming a sentence into a 5-7-5 straitjacket does not a haiku make."

I'm with Dunphy. Here's a Trinidad sample:

“Island Girls”
Mary Ann dons one
of Ginger’s dresses, but it
falls flat on her chest.

Japanese haiku poets do use a 5-7-5 format, but it applies to sounds, not syllables. Unfortunately, our syllables do not match our sounds. (Dunphy says that many translators believe that about 12 English syllables approximate the duration of 17 sounds in Japanese language.)

Haiku also don't have titles.

And they do focus on certain themes - especially nature - and imagistic language.

Dunphy provides some haiku of his own as examples, and they are good ones.

ant
on a tree stump
scurrying across decades


spring
the Inuit village
closer to the sea

You should give haiku a try this month. The NaHaiWriMo site has writing prompts. They are also on Facebook, so like them. And if you write haiku, post it on Twitter with the hashtag #nahaiwrimo.

Crescent Moon

Crescent moon -
bent to the shape
of the cold.

    ~ Issa   translated by Robert Hass The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa

The Haiku of E.E. Cummings

I have been rereading in Complete Poems, 1904-1962  by  E.E. Cummings this month. He was a favorite of mine in my youth and a poet that always caught my younger students' attention when I presented his poems.

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings (in the style of some of his poems) was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings.

Of course, they all wanted to play with capitalization and spacing and the wordplay that catches the eye in his poetry. (And they often began to write their names in lower case!)

But from what I can tell, Cummings has fallen off the reading list. It may be that his playfulness works against him as a "serious" poet, though he certainly was serious.

What I have noticed in my rereading is the haiku-like qualities of many of his poems. A great example is the poem below which is paired with a Basho haiku from 250 years earlier.

                                                                            l(a
                                                                            le
                                                                            af
Won’t you come and see                                      fa
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.                                                  ll
-  Basho, 1692                                                     s)
                                                                            one
                                                                             l
                                                                             iness

Readers have noted the "oneliness" of Cumming's poem. It is one of his poems that needs to be seen on the page and doesn't work as a reading. That's a good lesson for new poets.

&sun&
sil
e
nce
e
very
w
here
noon
e
isexc
ep
t
on
t
his
b
oul
der
a
drea(chipmunk)ming 

This small poem, as tall as a standing chipmunk, was one I have used with many students at different levels. With a little push from shore by me, they usually would find that "everywhere" is also "here" and even "very here" (the sun IS everywhere but it is VERY here in that spotlight on the chipmunk). It is "noon" (the time) and it is "noon e - no one" in this empty place. It is "this boulder" but it is "his boulder" for that moment. Finally, it is "dreachipmunkming" - the word game of a chipmunk in the middle of dreaming.

When the text is laid out horizontally, it reads as l(a leaf falls)oneliness. In other words, a leaf falls is inserted within the first two letters of loneliness. In haiku poetry, the image of a single falling leaf is a common symbol for loneliness. That loneliness is enhanced by the structure of the poem and reminds the reader that separation is often the cause of loneliness. As he often does, Cummings divides words like loneliness to emphasize the one within it. Even the isolated letter l at top appears much like a number 1 to "title" this untitled poem.

Another similar "haiku" from Cummings is one that students discover is the image of  "this one snowflake alighting upon a gravestone" but which appears on the page as:

one
t
hi
s
snowflake
(a
    li
      ght
    in
g)                                                                                      
is upon a gra
v
es
t
one
It's an extreme example of a way to construct a haiku on a page, but a good lesson in spacing, line breaks, and "concrete" poetry. I have asked poets in workshops to take a haiku they like and do the same thing. The process forces you to slow down and really consider those words. And that is always a good thing.

RESOURCES

http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Welch4.htm

The E.E. Cummings Society

Books by E. E. Cummings

Autumn Haiku Workshop (NJ)

We will be offering a another free haiku workshop next month in New Jersey. Our last workshop celebrated the start of summer and this next one will focus on autumn.

The autumn haiku workshop with Ken Ronkowitz is on both reading and writing haiku, that best known (and misunderstood?) form of Japanese verse. It will be held Saturday, October 8, 2011.

Though many Westerners associate haiku with early lessons on writing poetry as a child, the form dates back more than 300 years and is considered very serious poetry in the East.

Haiku consists of non-rhyming verses that frequently use nature and seasonal themes that aim to evoke vivid mental pictures and stir strong emotions in readers.

It is a form that has connections to other mediums of expression, aesthetics and Zen culture.

In the workshop, we will read and discuss the history of haiku, how it is composed in English and then compose and share our own haiku.


Our host location for this workshop is the Ringwood Public Library (New Jersey).

• The Essential Haiku
• The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets
• Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide
• The Haiku Handbook - How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku

A Brief Haiku Lesson

Our July prompt uses the tanka poetry form which is the "grandmother" of the newer haiku form. Here is a bit of haiku information that may add to your understanding of the tanka form.

Haiku verse consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. The tone of these poems are derived from a combination of this syllabic structure, imagery, and choice of words.

It reflects the values of Japanese culture and the strong influence of Zen Buddhism, especially in the way that haiku emphasizes a single moment. Most haiku give a very brief description of some event or object belonging to nature. In the traditional form, they contain either a direct or indirect reference to a season that turns the reader's attention to the passage of time.

Haiku came from the tanka form which itself was part of a longer renga. Renga (RAY'N-GAH) is "linked elegance" - a Japanese poetry form in which three-line stanzas of 5-7-5 are linked by a two-lines of 7-7 and were usually written by two or more persons. Poets such as Matsuo Basho developed the 3 lines as its own accepted form.

Traditional haiku also contains kigo (KEY-GO) - a seasonal word. Rather than say "spring", the mention of a cherry blossom signals the season, for example.

Japanese does not have syllables, so our Western haiku in 5-7-5 syllables is an approximation of the way on (OH'N), or sound units, are used in Japanese. Each sound in a word is an on. For example, the word "Tokyo" has three on: to- k - yo. These are similar to syllables in English.

Our syllable is an uninterrupted sound. The word "jump" contains two morae in Japanese as does "haiku". But in English language, those two words are not equal in syllables.

The Japanese mora is what we might call a short syllable and the shortest linguistic measure. A long syllable is two morae (the plural of mora).  The word "jump" contains two morae (j-ump) and the word "haiku" contains three (ha-i-ku).


The Haiku Handbook -25th Anniversary Edition: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku
Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide
The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (Essential Poets)
Illustrated Basho Haiku Poems (Little eBook Classics)

Haiku Workshop in NJ June 25

Poets Online is sponsoring a free haiku workshop this Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 7:00pm in North Plainfield, New Jersey. This free workshop will be conducted by Ken Ronkowitz.

Though many Westerners associate haiku with early lessons on writing poetry as a child, the form dates back more than 300 years and is considered very serious poetry in the East. Haiku consists of non-rhyming verses that frequently use nature themes and aim to evoke vivid mental pictures and stir strong emotions in readers.

We will discuss what is haiku and how it is composed in English, look at related forms, and examine the connections to other mediums of expression, aesthetics and Zen culture.

The host, Organigaya Cafe, will serve organic Japanese fare prior to the workshop, so arrive early and enjoy a great meal before the workshop begins. Free cup of  House Green Tea to all attendees.

Organigaya Cafe, 478 Somerset Street, North Plainfield, New Jersey - organigaya.com 

Suggested Haiku Reading

• The Essential Haiku
• The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets
• Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide
• The Haiku Handbook -25th Anniversary Edition: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate HaikuThe Haiku Handbook - How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku