5/7/5

I do not know what/to write about for this week/Wow, this blog is hard. Oh, I know! I’ll write about haikus, seeing as I just conveniently wrote one. Terrible, terrible jokes aside (that I totally didn’t plan ahead of time or anything), this week’s Dead Poets Society will be focusing on the traditional Japanese poem known as the haiku.

I’m sure most of you have heard of or remember writing haikus in elementary school. That’s not surprising given that the haiku is one of the easiest poetic forms to write for. The poems are three lines each with a specific syllable count. The first and last lines each have five syllables and the middle line has seven. They’re pretty simple to write and actually pretty fun to come up with in my experience!

However, the haiku did not start out as a prime poem for elementary school aged children. It began as the opening to a style of Japanese poem known as ‘renga,’ which is an oral poem that has a haiku beginning followed by around 100 stanzas. These longer poems are also composed with the syllable account in mind. In the sixteenth century, the haiku broke away from the rest of the renga to become a poetic form in its own right.

Although the haiku is simple in nature, there are poets who are considered experts at the form. A Japanese poet named Matsuo Basho first mastered it in the seventeenth century. His most famous haiku is as follows:

“An old pond!
     A frog jumps in—
     the sound of water.”

Traditional haikus usually focus on themes of nature and are very direct in the emotions they convey. In the past, they were typically composed in first person and had other rules such as a pause in between the first and second lines. Today, many of these rules have been broken, even the all-important 5/7/5 syllable rule! Now, the emphasis is more on the idea behind the haiku being a quick but effective expression of a certain feeling using powerful images.

Modern poets have also taken up the art of the haiku. Finish poet Anselm Hollo’s ‘5 & 7 & 5’ is actually a very interesting take on the haiku. He composed the poem entirely of stanzas that are just little haikus. The language of these haikus is very untraditional and quite unusual, but very entertaining in a way. It’s also kind of jarring. Take, for example, this stanza/haiku:

“night train whistles stars

over a nation under

mad temporal czars”

I’m not entirely sure what any of that is supposed to mean, but it sounds pretty cool. Most of the other stanzas in this poem are similarly bizarre, but in a way, are kind of beautiful in that way.

Overall, I find the haiku to be a simple, but underrated form of poetry. Its simplicity and accessibility makes it fun to compose your own and play with some of the conventions of the form. I also find it fascinating how an entire genre of poetry could come from just the opening to another type of poem. This has certainly been an interesting look into a style of poetry this week. Happy reading!