The rule says that the haiku contains two separate parts:Ī section that creates an image (often the first two lines, but not always) This is a lesser-known haiku rule, but I really like it. Suddenly seeing how algebra unlocks the world of numbersīut viewing the haiku as a way to package up and convey your best observations is no bad way to think of it. Unexpected gratitude for an action someone did for you The feeling of acceleration as you pass a slower car How warm your socks felt on a cold morning Those observations could be of nature, or they could be of entirely other things: I said above that “the haiku conveys a single moment where the poet suddenly sees or realizes something”-and one way of thinking of the haiku is as a way of recording flashes of insight in your observations of the world. However, since then things have relaxed a lot, and you do not need to write haiku only about nature (though many still do, and you totally can).īut whatever topics you pick, the observation part is still very relevant. So in the Basho haiku about Kyoto, he couldn’t just say In the traditional haiku, the insight and the images always come from observation of the natural world. That’s what makes a haiku, a haiku: some amazing thing, that the poet has never realized before, brought vividly to life. Isn’t the haiku just so much better as a way of putting it? You see how clumsy that was for me to explain? And how many more syllables it took me than the poem needed (I make it 80!)?
Here, the sudden moment of realization is that the things we long for, especially in spring, are not actually the things we tell ourselves we long for (in this case, the Japanese capital city of Kyoto), but our dreamed or imagined versions of those things (in other words, the idea of a perfect, lively city). In this way of thinking, the haiku is a lightning bolt-fast, clear, and striking, it shows a whole panorama of thought in a single flash.įor example, here’s a wonderful haiku by the most famous haiku writer of all, Japanese poet Basho: The most important of these other rules is that the haiku conveys a single moment where the poet suddenly sees or realizes something. To find out what else we need to add to the 5-7-5 pattern to make a real poem, let’s go back to the other rules of the traditional haiku.
Yes, it has the 5-7-5 pattern, but it needs something else to make it even close to poetry (or maybe a LOT of things!). This is clearly neither poetry nor a haiku! In fact, one way of defining a haiku is that it is a poem of 17 syllables in 3 lines, like this:Īnd according to that definition, the following drivel would be a haiku:
The traditional Japanese haiku has a large number of rules-a surprising number, given its short size!īut (as with the sonnet) modern usage has stripped away a lot of these. “Rules” for Writing Haiku All you need is 5-7-5-or not?
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