I'm going to add a haiku and hopefully start a trend. Maybe everybody can write one. I am not alone, There are others here with me. But I feel alone.
Personal rule of mine: When encountering any Haiku thread, I must participate. Time to toss some syllables around. Kerosene goddess. Flames kiss the darkest corners of ebony night. The retinal burn of an instant consumed, trails behind Kerosene Goddess. Souls roar as flames kiss wind. Auditory awe. Jet engine peal reminding of the peril in motion. Kerosene Goddess. Feet kiss ground in spiral dance A dervish prayer Elemental control in fluidic motion, she whirls... Ok..so I ended up going a bit on the Tonka side.
My haikus are never serious. Off the top of my head... Nine to five torture Deadlines, phone lines, worry lines The migraine, she comes. Now back to work I go.
What is it you got? (I was refering to a different haiku. Plus - trying not to sound petty - I think we know what a standard haiku is)
You'd be surprised. Some folk protest that 3-5-3 is a valid haiku form and I just can't find anything, anywhere that backs that up.
If you read just about any serious, scholarly book on haiku, you will find that the fewer the syllables, the better. Most experts on the form believe that striving for a total syllable count of 12 captures the essence of the form in English. Genuine haiku is very difficult to write, just as writing a sonnet is more than following a standard rhyme scheme. Some very general rules for writing this form of poetry in English are as follows; The first and third lines should be between 2 and 5 syllables, the briefer the better. The second line should be between 4 and 7 syllables. Subject matter for haiku come from nature; there should be very little mention of the human made world or references to the self. There should be a reference to the season. This needn't be as obvious as snow or roses ... it could be an image of a bird building a nest or a turtle egg hatching. The first line should contain a complete image. The second and third lines should contain another image in contrast to the imagery in the first line. In studying haiku, I have found the second and third lines typically to be one clause with the noun on the second line and the verb on the third line. In general, the purpose of haiku is to capture a fleeting moment in the natural world that, when meditated upon, may reveal a Truth about life or the natural world. The same form, though usually humorous with references to people or human made objects, is called Senryu. Tanka is the form that is generally suited to writing about human thoughts and feelings. I did extensive research on Japanese poetic forms and their adaptation into English for a lesson I co-taught. My fellow teacher and I went back and forth back and forth ... "Everyone knows that haiku is about the syllable count - 5-7-5. Are you saying that no one on the elementary or secondary level ever teaches it properly? You've got to be kidding." "Yes, that is what I'm saying, and no, I'm not kidding. If we're going to teach a disciplined poetic form, then we're going to do it properly. Otherwise it is like teaching kids to write a specific form of sonnet (Petrarchan, Spenserian, Shakespearean, or Miltonic ... take your pick) and telling them not to pay attention to the meter or rhyme scheme." All that is not to say that poems in this thread are not well written and expressive ... they simply are not haiku.
Well, I had a big long winded post on kanji, syllables, Fellenosa and such to try and qualify my previous statement since it all got 'like that' *snap snap* but we've gone through that once already, so here's the brief version. The english 5-7-5 was born of some literarily talented folk, who found the principles of japanese haiku ingtriguing. No, it's not "true haiku" but since it's what we, being english, call haiku, I didn't see it necessary to qualify. I also see it as a valid form unto itself, and figure it's worthy of respect in its own right(even if we're just all ignorant round-eyed barbarians :1eye: ), which is why I was curious about 3-5-3 . Perhaps Pound and crew should have just given it a different name... And to answer my own question, 3-5-3 can be valid, within the parameters of Fellenosa's translations. It's just not very common, escpeically since the English form became defined by 5-7-5. Kudos to those who strive, for whatever reason, to make english haiku as close to the japanese version as possible. It's an interesting challenge, though somewhat futile at the end of the day - so lets just all have some fun
