Yours was lovely, and inspired my response! I love a little riff off someone else's work - like a poetry jam. What you imagined was what I wanted .. high five!
Haiku are really your own game. The strict traditional way is 5/7/5 mora, which isn't quite the same as syllables but is close. Also kigo and kireji. But there are also gendai haiku in Japan that are completely freestyle w/no count
Hmmm … I’ll have to look up a few examples to get a better feel of it all. I’ve noticed you talk about gendai in your haiku posts, but since I wasn’t really connecting it to actually writing haiku, I guess that I didn’t really understand it on a deeper level.
Inspired by just being able to sort of Tweet a haiku, I wrote a couple more yesterday that put the counter syllable structure to use.
It's all an interesting topic. My favorite haiku were by a fella names Santōka. If you think 17 mora in Japanese is short, Santōka would go even shorter. He was one of the first Gendai haiku poets and still one of the best examples.
I just googled mora, but so far I haven’t read an explanation that makes sense to the point where I could look at a haiku written in Japanese and identify them.
It's one of those things you do develop a feel for. I've been reading haiku for so long that I can kind of just feel if it's a haiku, even if it doesn't hit the exact right count (such as with Santōka). It's kind of like in English when someone says something in a way that's a bit off and we get the feeling it might be a poem, or maybe a bit of Shakespeare verse, or maybe a song lyric. It just feels different than normal speech even if we can't articulate why. It's not necessarily a logical thing. But you can feel a difference. Haiku are the same.
I happen to prefer writing gendai haiku in English but traditional form in Japanese. I think it's easier for me in Japanese if I have the structure, but in English I like the freedom of no rules.
From talking to my father-in-law, and probably from reading your haiku posts as well, I have a fuzzy understanding (or misunderstanding) that haiku (traditionally?) try to describe an image, often of nature, in the first two lines, and then in the third try to do something a little different that maybe surprises the reader, or inverts the ideas hinted at in the first two lines, or maybe just deepens the meaning and feel of the haiku by taking a left turn, so to speak.
Now that I’m trying express what I think I know, I’m realizing that I can’t do it. Hmmm …
Anyway, with this half-developed idea in mind, I tried writing haiku yesterday, but found the surprise in line three to be very difficult to write due to the limited amount of words I was letting myself use.
If I hadn’t limited the number of words, though, I have a feeling that I still wouldn’t have been able to capturing what I was trying to, and in the end I would have ended up with an unfinished haiku. Does that ever happen to you?
That's basically right. That change in focus is usually set off by the kiriji, the cutting word. But it doesn't have to take place before the last line, it could be near the beginning. It's not necessarily a surprise or an inversion, it is just usually a change in focus. I gave some examples in my post explaining haiku here.
I also covered in that post a little of what you are talking about. Haiku as it original was was highly influenced by Zen. It inherited the idea that we can often describe reality better by saying less. The more you try to explain, the less you do, the more words you use, the more complicated you make it, and so on. The challenge of haiku then is deleting everything except what is essential.
See the issa snail haiku on that post I wrote. I think that illustrates the difference quite well. Look at how sparse the Japanese really is but yet how it can suggest so much. That is one of Issa's most famous haiku and one of the most famous in Japan and for good reason.
That’s really nice!
I read that and imagine two cold people holding each other tightly trying to keep warm.
I had forgotten that haiku are counted by syllables and not words.
Yours was lovely, and inspired my response! I love a little riff off someone else's work - like a poetry jam. What you imagined was what I wanted .. high five!
Perfect!🙌
Haiku are really your own game. The strict traditional way is 5/7/5 mora, which isn't quite the same as syllables but is close. Also kigo and kireji. But there are also gendai haiku in Japan that are completely freestyle w/no count
Hmmm … I’ll have to look up a few examples to get a better feel of it all. I’ve noticed you talk about gendai in your haiku posts, but since I wasn’t really connecting it to actually writing haiku, I guess that I didn’t really understand it on a deeper level.
Inspired by just being able to sort of Tweet a haiku, I wrote a couple more yesterday that put the counter syllable structure to use.
I’ll post another one soon.
It's all an interesting topic. My favorite haiku were by a fella names Santōka. If you think 17 mora in Japanese is short, Santōka would go even shorter. He was one of the first Gendai haiku poets and still one of the best examples.
I'll go look at the others you tweeted!
I just googled mora, but so far I haven’t read an explanation that makes sense to the point where I could look at a haiku written in Japanese and identify them.
A rhythmic unit based on length. 🤷♂️
It's one of those things you do develop a feel for. I've been reading haiku for so long that I can kind of just feel if it's a haiku, even if it doesn't hit the exact right count (such as with Santōka). It's kind of like in English when someone says something in a way that's a bit off and we get the feeling it might be a poem, or maybe a bit of Shakespeare verse, or maybe a song lyric. It just feels different than normal speech even if we can't articulate why. It's not necessarily a logical thing. But you can feel a difference. Haiku are the same.
Interesting.
I’m impressed that you kept reading after becoming a father. I think for me, that was the first thing to go, reading time.
I happen to prefer writing gendai haiku in English but traditional form in Japanese. I think it's easier for me in Japanese if I have the structure, but in English I like the freedom of no rules.
From talking to my father-in-law, and probably from reading your haiku posts as well, I have a fuzzy understanding (or misunderstanding) that haiku (traditionally?) try to describe an image, often of nature, in the first two lines, and then in the third try to do something a little different that maybe surprises the reader, or inverts the ideas hinted at in the first two lines, or maybe just deepens the meaning and feel of the haiku by taking a left turn, so to speak.
Now that I’m trying express what I think I know, I’m realizing that I can’t do it. Hmmm …
Anyway, with this half-developed idea in mind, I tried writing haiku yesterday, but found the surprise in line three to be very difficult to write due to the limited amount of words I was letting myself use.
If I hadn’t limited the number of words, though, I have a feeling that I still wouldn’t have been able to capturing what I was trying to, and in the end I would have ended up with an unfinished haiku. Does that ever happen to you?
That's basically right. That change in focus is usually set off by the kiriji, the cutting word. But it doesn't have to take place before the last line, it could be near the beginning. It's not necessarily a surprise or an inversion, it is just usually a change in focus. I gave some examples in my post explaining haiku here.
I also covered in that post a little of what you are talking about. Haiku as it original was was highly influenced by Zen. It inherited the idea that we can often describe reality better by saying less. The more you try to explain, the less you do, the more words you use, the more complicated you make it, and so on. The challenge of haiku then is deleting everything except what is essential.
See the issa snail haiku on that post I wrote. I think that illustrates the difference quite well. Look at how sparse the Japanese really is but yet how it can suggest so much. That is one of Issa's most famous haiku and one of the most famous in Japan and for good reason.
I remember reading that post when you published it. I’ll take a look at again sometime today.
That’s really nice!
I read that and imagine two cold people holding each other tightly trying to keep warm.
I had forgotten that haiku are counted by syllables and not words.
Very good!