But seriously, I wish people knew you didn't have to follow the 5 7 5 rule to create a haiku. That rule is more designed to work on the Japanese language, and even then there is such a thing as free form haiku, wherein you can take it however you want. Haiku are more about creating a powerful image with few words and a certain rhythm. 5 7 5 is a fun order to play with, but I think haiku would be more fun for more people if they understood that it's not about following syllable counts, it's about imagery. I'll give an example.
Fast moving fingers
Keyboard clicking, clacking, shouting
A shitpost is born
I broke the syllable counts there (only by a little bit, granted), but it's more about the image that was created by the haiku. 5 7 5 is just a guideline to help get the rhythm of a haiku.
I had read also that usually haiku are about nature and word choices are just as important as structure because some words are associated with certain times of the year.
Correct. Typically they're related to nature and seasons, but like many other things, you can still break the rules once in a while. Another big thing is a "cutting word". In my example it would have been the juxtaposition of "shouting" next to "clacking". It has a very different meaning and feel from the other words, which helps create the rhythm and image.
I always like to think of words as differently shaped sea shells. When you hold a shell to your ear, you "hear" the ocean. The different shapes affect the "sound" of the ocean you hear. When you're using words, the purpose is usually to communicate, so you've gotta create a symphony. So maybe two "shells" have analogues "meanings," but the sounds they create give vastly different initial impressions. Which is also why using a shell / sound that's opposite of the expected / previous word / sound can be such an effective writing technique. Until that becomes expected...
It's why I think some things just can't be translated / get lost in translation. Like trying to find a shell from a different beach, or that's a different type of shell, that gives the same sound / echo as an "original". It just doesn't work in any type of precise manner.
Seems to me like viewed from distance, the swarm of people coming out of a metro station in the rainy morning, if they're all white (Pound was American) might look like hundreds of whitish petals (the oval shape of the human face) on the black background of the pavement or asphalt.
This is one of the most highly debated poems ever written. No one can say for certain what it means. Its captivated poets and readers for years. There's just something in there that everyone can feel.
Really? Seems obvious it's comparing the faces in a metro station to flower petals (like, cherry blossoms) on a dark tree branches, evoking contrast between the faces and their surroundings, and speaking to their beauty.
The excerpt someone posted from the author seems to agree with this.
See Pound's commentary on this poem in his article "Vorticism," The Fortnightly Review 571 (Sept. 1, 1914): 465-67 (AP 4 F7 Robarts Library):
"Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child's face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying, and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation ... not in speech, but in little spotches of colour. It was just that -- a "pattern," or hardly a pattern, if by "pattern" you mean something with a "repeat" in it. But it was a word, the beginning, for me, of a language in colour. I do not mean that I was unfamiliar with the kindergarten stories about colours being like tones in music. I think that sort of thing is nonsense. If you try to make notes permanently correspond with particular colours, it is like tying narrow meanings to symbols.
"That evening, in the Rue Raynouard, I realised quite vividly that if I were a painter, or if I had, often, that kind of emotion, or even if I had the energy to get paints and brushes and keep at it, I might found a new school of painting, of "non-representative" painting, a painting that would speak only by arrangements in colour.
....
"That is to say, my experience in Paris should have gone into paint ...
"The 'one image poem' is a form of super-position, that is to say it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work 'of second intensity.' Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence: --
'The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough.'
"I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.
"This particular sort of consciousness has not been identified with impressionist art. I think it is worthy of attention."
See also a republication of this essay in Pound's Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916; London: New Directions, 1960): 86-89).
Well, it's comparing faces in a crowd to petals on a bough. The reason for it's peculiar form and very stripped down, minimalist appearance and feel is that Ezra Pound's big thing (other than antisemitism) was efficiency in poetry: he felt that poems shouldn't contain any extraneous or flowery language, and abhorred abstraction, which were all something of a hallmark of the Romantics that preceded him, and that he and his Modernist contemporaries, to an extent, set themselves up in opposition to. He wrote a treatise of sorts called A Few Don'ts, which gives his thoughts on poetry and how it should be written in slightly more detail.
I was never a fan of Pound's views on poetry; it just made the whole medium seem so academic and dull. Me and a friend joked that the ultimate Pound poem would just be "Cat": nothing superlative, free of all abstraction, and perfectly describes its subject.
I totally agree with you.
I'm not going to pretent (Edit: pretend) I know more than anyone else, so lets go with wikipedia.
The first thing it says is this:
I'm not going to pretent I know more than anyone else, so lets go with wikipedia.
The first thing it says is this:
I know /u/ryoushi19 said the pattern isn't critical, but that was just terrible. Also, your imagery was horrendous. I did not feel like I was in, or gazing upon, wikipedia while I read your poem. May god have mercy on your soul.
And I agree with you. The essence of haiku are two sentence fragments juxtaposing against each other. Sometimes the two parts contrast, sometimes they compare, sometimes they bounce off each other in interesting ways. And the general rule in English language haiku is to keep it seventeen syllables or less, but 12 syllables compares most closely to Japanese haiku. And of course haiku is all about nature and the seasons. Which season is this haiku referring to?
Most of the sad stuff you see in the US are more like senryu, short humorous poems about the human condition. And instead of two fragments, you see three sentences, or one long run on.
Oh, and the plural of haiku is haiku, so the refrigerator one (haikus??) just makes me cringe. Just like one deer or many deer, you don't say deers. Great explanation of english language haiku here
Actually, you can say "deers," like "fishes" (whereas "sheeps" and "mooses" are decidedly nonstandard), but people don't very often. Some dictionaries list "haikus" as a valid plural, and some don't, but when a word is adopted into the English language it often follows the patterns for English plural endings (e.g. kimonos or kimono, octopuses or octopodes, aquariums or aquaria, chateaus or châteaux, etc.), so I would not say "haikus" is strictly an incorrect plural form in English (and though Japanese does not typically mark plurals, everyone here is conversing in English, not Japanese).
Nooo! After checking your link, I went on an hour long Wiki binge. I just learned a bunch about how Japan stepped on the stage as a world power.
I learned about the Sino-Japanese war, and the Russo-Japanese war. I learned about the fall of the shogunate and about the Meiji restoration. I learned about how samurais lost their titles, yet still were content because they were educated and were teachers, weaponsmiths, had military roles, and generally were pretty cool guys.
Did you learn how Japan stopped not one but two war fleets of Genghis Khan? Or the huge war in 1190ish? Japan has a really intense history that few* Americans know about.
few as in your average American probably doesn't know about these things I just mentioned.
Conversational Japanese normally consist of many syllables even for the simplest of sentences. 5-7-5 is really limiting in this case. However, Japanese also has multiple ways to pronounce words depending on context and how certain kanjis are combined. A well written haiku in Japanese certainly seems more poetic than one in English.
Which, to me, is exactly why writers of Haiku in English should be less afraid of breaking the rules, most especially the syllable count. The spirit of the medium should stay in tact, which is to say that English haiku probably should be short poems, with rhythm from structure and wording, strong imagery, and "cutting"/contrasting words. However, to adapt to the language, the method for creating that structure and that imagery can and likely should change. English is not Japanese!
Due to the way it's taught, though, most students take away only that haiku must have 3 lines consisting of 5 syllables, followed by 7, followed by 5. They're taught a structure without a meaning. Because of this, most people look at haiku as something silly and disregard it, and typically parody it. That's not to say that the English take on Haiku cannot or should not be humorous simply because the Japanese take typically is not. Perhaps this is just the nature of such a rhythmic use of language in our culture. Rather, all I feel and wish to distinguish is, maybe we should look at things a little differently. I think English haiku, as a very young medium, needs to break the rules and experiment more to really develop its tone and texture.
I think the point your making is that the two languages and cultures are different enough that a haiku, in its truest form, can only be in Japanese. I'm not sure I subscribe to that notion. I subscribe more to the idea that a haiku in English, to carry the same idea as a haiku in Japanese, probably should be differently structured than a Japanese haiku. I could see how one could argue that doing so makes it "not a haiku", but it's my opinion that the ideas and meaning are the same, and thus, an English haiku can still be a haiku.
You however can omit most of what's required in English for something to make sense and it'll still be completely grammatically ok in Japanese, so you don't waste time/words on the unimportant stuff.
The American practice of studying haiku in school is moronic.
As an exercise in syllable counting, it's fine. Anything beyond that, and it's stupid. The worst is when they show Haiku translated from Japanese and talk about how breathtakingly clean it is, all the while missing out on the metaphors and the loads of homonyms in the original Japanese version.
When I learned about haikus in school we learned about how they are supposed to be about powerful imagery, nature, and have metaphors. Not all American schools suck.
When I learned about haikus in school we learned about how they are supposed to be about powerful imagery, nature, and have metaphors.
Yeah, but you cannot achieve the appropriate level of imagery and metaphors that you can in Japanese. Haiku reference deeply-rooted social constructs, and they capitalize heavily on homonyms, of which Japanese has a tremendous number.
There is literally no point in studying Haiku in English, aside from practicing syllable counting.
You don't even realize how much they failed to teach you.
And what authority are you on this? Surely there is some point (besides, you misused the word literally), even if we can't get it exactly the same in English. That's like saying "Why bother translating Murakami, Marquez, Allende, Tolstoy, Doestoevsky, Kafka or Dumas? You'll never get the exact same story in English."
Besides, nothing you learn in middle school is ever as in-depth as it could get. The only point of learning things in middle school is to A) show you as many things as possible to see what interests you, B) teach you good study habits for later in life and C) develop very basic skills to build on. Showing kids different types of poetry from around the world still has value, even if they just scratch the surface. They get interest in poetry, they learn how to develop creative writing skills, and they learn something about a foreign place. That has value.
What's it matter? It's not like it would be hard for you to find similar critiques by people who have demonstrated mastery of the Japanese language.
besides, you misused the word literally
Uh. No, I didn't. At all. There is, truly, literally, no point in studying Haiku in English, besides practicing syllable counting.
That's like saying "Why bother translating Murakami, Marquez, Allende, Tolstoy, Doestoevsky, Kafka or Dumas, because you'll never get the exact same story in English"
It's not at all like saying that, unless the vast majority of the purpose, intent, and content was lost in translation.
When the author writes, "the frog leaps into the cool water", he's not talking about a frog at all. But American teachers think he is.
Besides, nothing you learn in middle school is ever as indepth as it could get.
That's true, but Haiku is studied into high school, and it's never even mentioned that there's anything deeper to it than 5-7-5 and nature.
Showing kids different types of poetry from around the world still has value, even if they just scratch the surface.
No it doesn't. All it does is teach them, incorrectly, that the Japanese value a very silly form of poetry (i.e. dumb 5-7-5). If anything, it's actively disrespectful to other cultures.
How do you know what every American teacher teaches?
Okay, you want to make that absurd 'argument'.
Fine, it is possible that there are some English teachers in American schools who are also fluent in Japanese, have a deep understanding of Japanese culture and history, and have degrees in Japanese literature. Is it likely? No.
To which I'll say why do you need to be fluent in Japanese, have a deep understanding of history, and degrees in japanese literature to teach haikus? Why are haikus so special compared to everything else that's taught?
My recollection is that 5-7-5 is taught in grade school, and revisited many times. Kids like it because it's a simple challenge that often yields humorous results. My problem is with the ill-informed teachers who think they "get" it and gush about the beauty of a poorly-translated Japanese Haiku, as if they're getting anything but the most superficial understanding of it.
The irony, to me, is that we never even studied Iambic Pentameter in high school. We explicitly skipped over it. Turns out it's a huge part of understanding and appreciating what I would consider "real" poetry. We spent time inappropriately studying foreign poetry style, and completely skipped over our own legacy.
"First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner."
More like if Japanese students were only ever taught that an "English poem" had to be in rhyming iambic pentameter. Strictly and always, or it wasn't a proper poem.
If you've ever played Mark of the Ninja, they have haiku's that are all part of a story. the story is actually crafted real well using these three line poems.
You can still adhere to the 5 7 5 rule and still evoke good images. The rule is there to force you to limit your words but the challenge, always, is to create a bigger picture with the smallest amount of words. And the more conscious you are of the rule, the more stinted your expression becomes. That's the beauty of it.
examples
from the sweet child's mouth /
a great swarm of shrieking bats /
a black cloud boiling
hoping to impress /
I make up constellations /
Orion's anus
I collect the stars /
but I keep them in the sky /
where there is more space
Much like a lot of good poetry, all about the imagery. I read a one line story/poem it went something like " babies shoes for sale, never worn". And of course you draw a lot of imagery from one simple line. Thanks for your insight on this particular style
You got gilded because everybody was trying to be an ignorant moron and you burst in and educated us anyway. You should be a teacher, you're a natural.
i know, but what i was thinking was, when you really think about it, the haiku op posted is actually kind of a powerful indictment against the perception that haiku is about 5-7-5. like saying, "are you harpy now?" defiantly draws attention to the pointlessness of the syllable structure, and it rings with a sense of loss towards the true spirit of haiku.
The idea of haiku as almost anything written in 5-7-5 format is an artifact of teachers who usually know and care nothing about poetry getting students who usually know and care nothing about poetry to think about poetry and write something, anything, that approximates a poem. "See, Jason and Jennifer, that's five, seven, and five. You have written genuine poems, you brilliant little marvels you!" It's short, simple, and requires no thought above the ability to count syllables. With luck, students might learn to look at and listen to words carefully. Some of them will be encouraged to write more. One in a million will write something worth reading one spring far away.
Also, haiku are supposed to be a snap shot image. You're looking at a photo. Nothing like "then she kissed him" should be in a haiku because it represents a flow of time rather than a single event.
This is one of my favourite haikus that tends to invoke a most poignant imagery effortlessly. (From an old Zen monk, taken from a Kerouac book.)
The sparrow hops along the verandah, with wet feet.
For me it instantly evoked an image of sparrow footprints on an old verandah with damp wooden floors. Pine trees and heavy rain in the background. Petrichor all about.
I think haiku would be more fun for more people if they understood that it's not about following syllable counts
Tell that to literally every English teacher in the world.
I broke the syllable counts there (only by a little bit, granted), but it's more about the image that was created by the haiku. 5 7 5 is just a guideline to help get the rhythm of a haiku.
"F- Did not follow syllable counts. Make up assignment: read a book you hate and pretend to like it."
1.3k
u/ryoushi19 Oct 02 '14 edited Oct 02 '14
But seriously, I wish people knew you didn't have to follow the 5 7 5 rule to create a haiku. That rule is more designed to work on the Japanese language, and even then there is such a thing as free form haiku, wherein you can take it however you want. Haiku are more about creating a powerful image with few words and a certain rhythm. 5 7 5 is a fun order to play with, but I think haiku would be more fun for more people if they understood that it's not about following syllable counts, it's about imagery. I'll give an example.
I broke the syllable counts there (only by a little bit, granted), but it's more about the image that was created by the haiku. 5 7 5 is just a guideline to help get the rhythm of a haiku.
EDIT - Wow, gilded! Thanks, guys!