Haiku for everyday life
Jul 1st, 2008 by lekhni
Trying my hand at haikus, after the last tag. I have stuck to the traditional 5 syllable-7 syllable-5 syllable format, though it looks like I can also compose a haiku with 17 syllables in any other combination.
The car ahead spun
slowly in the snow. Rush hour.
She was glad to flee.
***
Six minutes before
the week’s laundry finishes.
She can check her blog.
***
Wimbledon matches
bring back memories of black
and white TV sets.
***
Monsoon rain brings frogs,
croaking all night, power cuts
Keep her awake too.
Reema 
Rajesh Kumar 
Mys Lyke Meeh 
Shrinidhi Hande 
wsw 
Amit 
km 
nits 
Billigflug 
??! 
Meira 
purplesque 
tabula rasa 
Technically, what you’ve written is not haiku, which has rules far more rigid than just 5-7-5 ‘onji’. There’s the ‘kireji’, which we don’t use in English because the concept of a ‘cutting word’ doesn’t exist. The ‘kigo’, or ’season word’ is more critical; it is quintessential to the haiku. Perhaps even more so than the 17 syllables, which result in much longer poetry in English than in Japanese. 5-7-5 poetry that do not contain kigo or kireji are known as senryu.
Thanks for that tip. I didn’t know any of that, and I was quite horrified to find my haikus turning into senryus.
So I went online to find out more about this elusive kigo that will change my low-born senryus into twice-born haikus. I am happy to report that I found this tutorial, in a website named “Haiku for people”. (Who else writes haiku? Goats?)
I am glad I found the “people” version. It says that a kigo is basically any word that describes the season in which the haiku is set. So I am happy to report that 3 out of 4 of my verses are haikus - “snow”, “Wimbledon” and “monsoon” take care of that. Quite unintentional of course. The fourth verse is possibly the goat version.
Lekhni: You may like to read the comment by Vivek Khadpekar on my post with the atrocious haiku. More enlightening. Worth writing a ‘Haiku for dummies: a cross-cultural perspective’ type of post for
I loved the Gujarati haiku he has quoted. He does seem to advocate the more lax “17 syllables in any 3 lines” approach. Certainly, this calls for more research and a “haiku for dummies” post
Are you writing it?
Hey so cool.. I have been writing Haikus as well… should put it up on my blog…
My favourite Haiku ever (although probably a senryu):
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
Vijay: You should. Would love to read yours.
kalafudra: That’s a good one. You are right about the not-making-sense part - I did read some haikus yesterday which did not make much sense to me. Like this one by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. You’d think he was making fun of haikus:
Sick and feverish
Glimpse of cherry blossoms
Still shivering.