11-01-2014, 07:33 PM
I agree with you entwife and I can sense your passion in defending the fundamentals of haiku and senryu. But alas it seems that haiku has reached unbelievable heights of popularity especially in the blog world and this also seems to be part of the reason why the majority of them that are written have nothing in common with haiku, they are seventeen syllable poems over three lines and usually about whatever the fuck is going through the mind of the writer at that moment.
I woke up at eight
had a shit, had some breakfast
then went for a walk
It doesn't help that there are numerous blogs that issue daily prompts to write haiku where they ask you to include things like "inner voice" or "battle tanks". I doubt whether the people who are currently writing all these 5-7-5 poems would ever change no matter what evidence you gave them that what they are writing is not technically correct.
But who are we to spoil their fun because of terminology, in some ways it's good to see so many people writing poetry and perhaps the odd one will eventually understand the essence of haiku.
I'm not entirely sure how haiku became so popular or where people found out about it, for me the first time I ever heard of Haiku was when I was 18 and read a Jack Kerouac book called 'The Dharma Bums'. And then for 20 years I wrote 17 syllable poems about nature thinking that they were haiku, but I did eventually see the light. I went back to look at that Jack Kerouac book not so long ago and found this quote in it....
"A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing, like the greatest haiku of them all probably is the one that goes 'The sparrow hops along the veranda, with wet feet.' By Shiki. You see the wet footprints like a vision in your mind and yet in those few words you also see all the rain that's been falling that day and almost smell the wet pine needles."
Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969)
The Dharma Bums
Perhaps I should have paid more attention first time round.
I woke up at eight
had a shit, had some breakfast
then went for a walk
It doesn't help that there are numerous blogs that issue daily prompts to write haiku where they ask you to include things like "inner voice" or "battle tanks". I doubt whether the people who are currently writing all these 5-7-5 poems would ever change no matter what evidence you gave them that what they are writing is not technically correct.
But who are we to spoil their fun because of terminology, in some ways it's good to see so many people writing poetry and perhaps the odd one will eventually understand the essence of haiku.
I'm not entirely sure how haiku became so popular or where people found out about it, for me the first time I ever heard of Haiku was when I was 18 and read a Jack Kerouac book called 'The Dharma Bums'. And then for 20 years I wrote 17 syllable poems about nature thinking that they were haiku, but I did eventually see the light. I went back to look at that Jack Kerouac book not so long ago and found this quote in it....
"A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing, like the greatest haiku of them all probably is the one that goes 'The sparrow hops along the veranda, with wet feet.' By Shiki. You see the wet footprints like a vision in your mind and yet in those few words you also see all the rain that's been falling that day and almost smell the wet pine needles."
Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969)
The Dharma Bums
Perhaps I should have paid more attention first time round.
wae aye man ye radgie