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.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Timothy Abeta
Videos of Black Pussy
Iraida Szklarski
Mallika
dipali
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.
I’m a student and very uncreative
any suggestions on writing great haiku’s?
thanks