Haiku

by Rob Schaeffer

Not a breath of air—
only a water bug mars
the pine's reflection

        Marjory Bates Pratt

Wet sand
tumbling back
into the sea.

        Unknown

The image is the most important part of Haiku. To make the image simple and clear, the Haiku should not be too long, which brings us to the form of a Haiku. In grade school, we all did something vaguely Haiku-esque that was three lines of five, seven, and five syllables each. Unfortunately this does not produce the same feel as the Japanese Haiku, since a Japanese Haiku is 5/7/5 onji, and these are not the same as syllables.

An English syllable can be as short as “a” or “I”, or as long as “bank” or “wrought,” while an onji is of more-or-less constant length. What this means is that seventeen syllables can convey a lot more than seventeen onji. There are three ways around this problem:

1. Count accented syllables. The book I use (see below) suggests doing this with two accented syllables on the first and last lines and three in the middle line.
2. Treat words that end in consanents as having an extra syllable. So bank would count as two syllables.
   
3. Wing it. Keep it brief, one or two images, keep it at or under 4/6/4. This is what I would recommend. Even the Japanese don’t stick too hard to seventeen onji.

Little red roses
popping out of the ground
a car blowing up

        Unknown Fifth Grader

Didn‘t expect that last line, did you? I didn’t. But it makes an image and breaks you out of typical Haiku mode. The above poem is an extreme example but it does show how to use surprise in a Haiku. More examples:

Passport check:
my shadow waits
across the border

        George Swede

Shiva
all those hands
all those pigeons

        Alexis Rotella

“What's this for?”
Says the carpenter
As he cuts it off.

        Anonymous Japanese, ca. 1800

Once you master imaging and making the reader picture the image, you have mastered Haiku.

There are other things about the Haiku form in English. Feel free to skip any annoying grammar that gets in the way of the image. Don’t say, “The statue of Shiva has many hands…” Cut to the chase. Punctuation and capitalization are also optional; I capitalize and mildly punctuate, but that’s me.

Traditional Japanese Haiku is about the seasons, and is supposed to contain certain words to cue the reader in on which season is being written about. I prefer the newer traditions, about things like Spam or the paper shredder. Write what you know.

On this note I will close with three by Jack Kerouac. Notice how you can see and hear or even feel the image.

Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.

Useless, useless,
the heavy rain
driving into the sea.

Missing a kick
at the icebox door
it closes anyway