Haiku Revisited
Haiku poet Michael Dylan Welch shares some thoughts on writing haiku the right way.
Michael Dylan Welch, who wrote on haiku for the 2005 Poet's Market, stopped by and offered some great advice in the comments to my "Haiku: Easy or Hard?" post from earlier this week. While it's probably best to read the comments first-hand, I figured I'd make it easy on people since the advice is very useful.
Some highlights:
- "My sense of things is that practically no current literary haiku writers believe the 5-7-5 pattern of syllables is applicable in English (in Japanese they count sounds, not syllables, which is why a one-syllable word like 'scarf,' in English, is counted as FOUR sounds when said in Japan, something like 'su-ka-ar-fu'), so I'm not sure I'd call 5-7-5 a 'traditional' viewpoint in English. More like a traditional misunderstanding."
- "Rather, what matters most in the tradition of haiku is kigo (season word) and kireji (cutting word), as well as objective sensory imagery (thus one wouldn't say that rain 'stampedes' the mud, because, as interesting as that is, it shows your interpretation and lacks the objectivity that lets readers have their own reaction to a carefully crafted image)."
- "At any rate, I always like to quote philosopher Roland Barthes on haiku. He said that 'The haiku has this rather fantasmagorical property: that we always suppose we ourselves can write such things easily.' Paradoxically, haiku is both easy and hard."
Welch also provided to links to check out:
- His essay "Becoming a Haiku Poet" at http://www.haikuworld.org/begin/mdwelch.apr2003.html
- Keiko Imaoka's essay "Forms in English Haiku" at http://asgp.org/agd-poems/keiko-essay.html
I would like to thank Welch, who is an expert in his field, for sharing so much great information with everyone. This is what having a community of poets is all about as far as I'm concerned.
*****
Play with poetic forms!
Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
