I have long been an admirer of poetry, and I have written many poems over the last forty-five years. My favorite form of poetry is haiku. Yesterday I came across a website of haiku poetry of a sort that has become increasingly common. It amounts to a couple of sentences that happen to add up to seventeen syllables that are broken down into three lines and the poems do not follow the natural form of haiku.
Haiku is Japanese poetry that uses a verse form comprised of of three lines of five, seven and five syllables. In traditional Japanese method the haiku is both a poetic form of expression and a way of understanding the world. It's wonderful brevity is meant to capture a moment in time, and is often considered a manner in which an epiphany is expressed.
Haiku is strongly associated with Zen and the concept of yugen, a term for beauty implying mystery, profoundness and a trace of longing referred to as sabi. Haiku is derived from tanka, a form of poetry practiced in the Japanese imperial court from the nineth through the twelth centuries. The form of those poems was a five line structure with a five, seven, five, seven, seven syllable count. The first three lines were called the hokku.
At the end of the eighteenth century the work of Japanese poet Masaolka Shiki led ot the hokku becoming the modern form now called haiku. Haiku is meant to evoke specific associations to images, usually natural phenomenon tied ot a particular season, these images are called kigo. The purpose of kigo is to identify the when and where of the haiku. Not all haiku refer to nature. Those that don't are called senryu. Haiku have no titles and are always written in the present tense. Immediacy of thought is pre-eminent.
Modern haiku owes much ot the work of three poets from the Edo period (1600-1868). Bashok, Buson and Issa were master of hokku. All three spent their lives wantering the countryside to gain direct experience of nature which inspired their work. Bashok is considered the father of haiku and most modern haiku is derived from his style.
Haiku is about stripping away the unnecessary to attain simple truth and immediacy. The postitioning of every word is important to attain a quality of truth and insight using as little as possible while evoking a haunting imagery that lingers in the mind. That is why I love haiku.
Here's one of mine:
Cherry blossoms drift
I remember us then, there
The loon's call echoes
