More about haiku

Most of us learned, probably in school, that a haiku is a Japanese poetry form in three lines 5, 7, and 5 syllables. This, it turns out, is a simplification and not necessarily true. It's a good firm guideline, a rule you can hang your hat on, but it overpowers the inherent subtleties of the form.

Recently, Peter Pereira pointed to a post about Haiku Blogging and offered that as a way to create short, compressed blog posts. Michael Dylan Welch then weighed in (yes, I'm kind of giving you the play-by-play) with some comments.

Michael knows a lot about haiku, and in his comments he explains that other factors are usually considered more important than a syllabic structure (Japanese doesn't parse by syllables anyway, but by sounds, or mora). These factors, he continues, are "kigo (season word), kireji (cutting word that usually divides the poem into two juxtaposed parts), and objective imagery (no concepts, judgments, conclusions, or analysis)." He adds that you can find a different haiku every day at tinywords.com.

For more information about haiku, you can read Becoming a haiku poet or Michael's ten tips, or you can visit his collection of haiku and photographs, Open Window.

No sign of snow

The clear sky a bowl
Robin's egg blue in winter
A day to begin

Today's

Winter comes to rest
The darkest nights of the year
A few clouds, few stars

Yesterday's haiku

Dark as an old hat
Morning hides inside of it
Winter sleeps late

***

Bottle of roses
Bright red beneath a gray sky
Man on his way home

***

These holiday lights
Like moons floating in pastels
Unexpected Spring

Stunning

Yesterday's poem on Poetry Daily.

Mmmm...

Whoa, Nellie

How did it get to be December already?

What about a poem to memorize?

What about an exercise?

Given the flurry of plans, it isn't such a good time to memorize anything. It is a good time to sing.

For an exercise, something simple. This comes from One Continuous Mistake, by Gail Sher: Write a haiku every day. Take a little moment. Breathe. Write your haiku.

You can get One Continuous Mistake from Amazon or you can probably order it from Open Books.

Yes...Really...Here...Now

The season's first snow.

Here, the first snow might be the only snow, so we enjoy it while we can.