poetree | Haiku, Take Two

The shortest form of English poetry I know comes from the Japanese: the 5-7-5 syllable lines comprising a ‘haiku’. The modern Japanese haiku in turn comes from an older form of Japanese poetry, the haikai no renga, which I will discuss later this week.

Apart from cultural differences in the usual content of a Japanese-language versus English-language haiku, there are important linguistic differences to keep in mind as well. Japanese as a language has very clear syllable counts: in the phonetic hirigana and katakana writing systems (as opposed to symbolic kanji characters) there are no characters for consonant sounds independent of vowels (with the exception of ん (‘n’) which functions as a pause syllable). English, to the contrary, is full of hidden stops and starts. For example, we count both ‘start’ and ‘starts’ as one syllable words, even though the ‘ts’ combination at the end of ‘starts’ acts as a second hidden syllable when spoken aloud, not unlike saying ‘star-tsu’.

Here is an English-language haiku I wrote for ‘tinroof’ for the haikai for codes project using a more Japanese-style syllabic count:

norm-making roots
itself in the small things: yes
you increase we

Experiment: following English into katakana: 'ts' and 'se' (sss) as separate syllables.

The upshot of transplanting the original format from Japanese is that the haiku in English doesn’t map neatly onto the usual rhyme and rhythm schemes of native English or Romance language poetry formats. It is visually distinct and instantly recognizable to a general audience without facilitating sing-song sloppiness or verbose obscurity. By its nature, it challenges the poet to be both succinct and precise, and as a result can pack a significant punch behind its deceptively simple three lines.

genealogy
of helping hands reminds us
action’s contagious

(Source: 'Poem For Your Thoughts?': Special US Voter Registration Edition fill for

nagasvoice’s prompt ‘pay it forward’)

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In my opinion, the haiku’s short format makes it ideal for micro-poetry events such as my occasional How Are You? (in Haiku) days. Whether or not you have thoughts to share concerning the main content of this post, I encourage you to write a haiku in the comments responding to the following prompt:

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku. I will leave anonymous comments screened unless otherwise asked; feel free to use this to leave private comments if that's what you're most comfortable with.

Haiku, Take Two

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