What Is A Haiku And What Isn’t
by
John J. Dunphy
(Originally published in the on line Book Blog of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
to write a haiku
there is a set formula
one has to follow
*****
My dear Aunt Minnie
loves to bake banana pies
for her family.
*****
sitting on my porch
i contemplate the full moon
in my wisdom quest
What do these three poems have in common? Some erudite readers who didn’t sleep through high school English will engage in a bit of syllable counting and suddenly proclaim, “They’re all haiku! The first line of each poem contains five syllables, the second line has seven syllables and the third line contains five syllables, for a grand total of just seventeen syllables. That’s the formula for writing haiku, which is a Japanese type of poetry.”
Well, I’ve got news for you, friends. As far as your high school introduction to haiku was concerned, you would have been better off catching a few Z’s like some of your classmates. Your teacher, regardless of his/her grasp of Shakespeare and Chaucer, didn’t know beans about haiku.
“Haiku”example 1, cited above, fails on two counts: (a) it’s wrong about haiku having a set formula one has to follow and (b) the poem itself, despite the 5–7–5 syllable count, isn’t even a haiku.
While many early English-language haiku poets indeed wrote in the 5–7–5 style, modern haiku poets have pretty much discarded that format. We believe that it tends to make a haiku too wordy and stilted-sounding. A genuine haiku is characterized by a freshness and spontaneity that simply can’t be conveyed by strait-jacketing its expression.
A declarative sentence that has been chopped up into a 5–7–5 format, such as example 2, is not a haiku! Does a rambunctious fan who jumps into the playing field of Busch Stadium during a game automatically become a Cardinal? Of course not — No more than a three-line sentence written 5–7–5 automatically qualifies as a haiku. Pseudo-mysticism, as embodied in example 3, doesn’t make the cut either. A haiku should not sound like a line of dialogue from the old “Kung Fu” TV series.
Real haiku nonetheless usually are written in three lines, and traditionally deal with nature.
the blood-red dawn
duck hunters crouch
behind a blind
*****
cemetery
wind sweeps a floral wreath
into the paupers’ section
*****
dawn
a beachball
leaving with the tide
*****
VA hospital
a tree in the courtyard
scarred by lightning
A senryu is a three-line poem that is similar to a haiku. Senryu deals with the foibles of human nature in a humorous or satirical manner.
wet footprints
in a U-turn
on the diving board
*****
school restroom
the English teacher corrects
the misspelled graffiti
*****
class reunion
the ex-football team captain’s date
handsome in his tux
*****
New Year’s Day
my champagne glass bubbling
with Alka-Seltzer
Please note that the preceding senryu are written in three lines, yet there’s nary a 5–7–5 format in sight. But check out the following poems.
IRS audit
examiner keeps chuckling
without looking up
*****
emergency room
parents tell their child to say
he fell down the stairs
*****
during the campaign
even his sign in my yard
leaning to the right
*****
her suicide note
she checks the dictionary
for correct spelling
There it is — that classical 5–7–5 style that I’ve been telling you to erase from your memory banks. And all four were published in reputable English-language haiku journals, no less. So what’s going on here?
It is permissible to write a 5–7–5 haiku or senryu, as long as the spontaneity of the poem isn’t compromised. Does the poem really work best when written that way? Then write it that way.
I urge you to check out the web site of the Haiku Society of America to learn more about haiku. Frogpond, the official journal of the Haiku Society of America, and Modern Haiku, the oldest English-language haiku journal in continuous existence, should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in haiku. A plethora of other haiku periodicals exist that also merit perusal. Get to know real haiku by subscribing to journals that publish the stuff.
Oh, one last thing. If you just know that the plural of haiku is haiku — not haikus — that alone will put you literary light-years ahead of the general public.
_____________________________________
NOTE: All poems in this essay were written by the author and have been published in various haiku journals…..except the three examples of pseudo-haiku, of course. If you’ve seen “poems” like those in print, you can rest assured that the periodical’s editor knew as much about haiku as Ed Wood knew about film-making.