Haiku

Here in the spring, I'm leading a creative writing class, and based on all the great things I got back in October from my friend Elliot's haiku workshop, I've decided to start the class off with haiku. 

Haiku has a number of advantages for high school use. It's a form that really demands an eye for detail and good, telling description. It's short and unintimidating, and if it's done right it works strongly against the teenage urge to make all poetry into angst-filled, emotional self-expression. As Elliot said, teaching Haiku he's never had suicidal Haikus or Haikus that he needs to send to the guidance counselor (Kapoo and I did our best to prove that the form can accomodate both, but the point still stands).

Haiku does present certain problems, the foremost among them actually being that it seems so easy. Just throw together a 5-syllable line, a 7-syllable line, and another 5-syllable line and you've got a haiku, right? Bonus points if you can work in nature and sound like a Zen Buddhist monk. The results are a form that's accessible and undaunting and quite a lot of bad haiku that's taken as acceptable--or even good--haiku. Take, for instance, Robert Mecum's Zombie Haiku, which isn't particularly strong as story or as humor, but which fails utterly as haiku (beyond having the presumed requisite number of syllables). In fact, most serious writers of haiku now argue for haiku that is closer to 8-10 syllables rather than 17 (it's still debated, but the general feeling seems to be that shorter haiku is closer to the original Japanese form). 

It's worth noting, however, that haiku is a pretty open form. People do still write haiku of 17 syllables that are very good. I'm going to give some guidelines for haiku as they were given to us in the workshop, but they are guidelines, not rules. "Serious" haiku published in haiku journals won't follow all these rules and no one else should feel obliged to just because they want to call what they're writing haiku, but nonetheless these are reasonable expectations for haiku.

1. 8-10 syllables
2. describes no more than two images, which appeal to the physical senses
3. only 3 lines, roughly long-short-long
4. no complete sentences
5. One line creates a single phrase, the other two creates a second phrase, though either the long or short phrase can come first
6. typically, the first phrase contains a kigo (word that identifies the season and/or setting), while the second phrase describes an action
7. written in the present tense
8. no more than one verb (sometimes not even one) and definitely no adverbs
9. no pronouns, with an exception made for possessive pronouns
10. no rhyme or similes
11. no titles 

Maybe another day I'll post some of my own haiku. Just as soon as, you know, I actually write some.

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