The Haiku Habit-Continued

Imagine you are lying out on the grass one summer evening. A firefly comes winging over your head and, for just a second, you see it set against the constellation, "Cassiopeia". In that one brief moment, the firefly has aligned you, the earth, and the universe, and you are reminded that all things are interrelated.

The haiku way is just to say it - simply. Written in a very direct manner, haiku tell the who, what, where, and when of the moment as the author perceived it through his or or her senses. The end result of such a concrete description is that the reader feels as if he or she also is having the experience. And because commentary is kept to a minimum, the reader is free to come to his or her own conclusions about what the experience means.

Haiku are Japanese in origin and traditionally consist of seventeen sound-symbols written in vertical lines. In English, they usually are seventeen or less syllables and spread over oone to four horitontal lines with three lines being the norm.

Matsuo Basho, the grand master of this form, emphasized that the poet should write directly from experience and strive to perceive the inner life of the subject or moment:

Because haiku often are written fresh from experience - or soon thereafter - and jotted down on the odd piece of paper or, better yet, in a pocket notebook kept on hand just for this purpose, they are easy to get into the habit of writing.

Haiku currently is growing worldwide in popularity. Traditional ways of understanding and composing haiku exist side by side with experimentations with the form as well as with its underlying philosophy and aesthetics.

The following basic approach is meant to get you started in writing haiku. As your understanding and experience grows, you may wish to explore other approaches.

Before starting, it might be a good idea to do a little warm-up to get you in the haiku frame of mind. During the next week, try the following exercises:

~ Practice focusing totally on the moment at hand - the who, what, where, and when of it.

~ Devote a day to each of your five senses. Write down a day's worth of sensations from all that you touch, for example.

~ Try walking slowly through apark, woods, or along city streets. Absorb the myriad details, the little happenings, as well as the ambiance.

To start writing haiku, you need only be on the lookout for a "haiku moment" in your daily life.

For example, say you are driving to work during the morning rush hour. Behind you is a glorious full moon setting in the west.

What two or three images or sensory impressions in this moment combine to make it meaningful to you? In this example, the images are the rush hour traffic and the full moon as you see it in your rearview mirror.

Jot these images down (ie. at the first stoplight). Make a mental note to work them up into a haiku sometime later in the day.

When you are ready, sit down with a fresh sheet of paper - or perhaps a notebook - and work up several versions describing these images in three lines. In the end, your poem might be as simple and straightforward as:

Remember that haiku are grounded in your senses. Try to describe what you saw, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard.

Try not to use Western-style literary metaphors or similes, such as "my love is like a red, red rose." Use simple language and let the moment speak for itself. This allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about what the poem means.

To help your reader linger within your poem and savor its meaning, put in a grammatical break at the end of the first line or the second, but not at both. This slows down the speed of the poem and gives it a greater feeling of substance.

To emphasize the break, you may wish to use an ellipsis, hyphen, comma, colon, or semi-colon.

A single line followed by a break should consist of just a word or two or a short phrase.

In haiku, brevity is a virtue. Use approximately seventeen syllables or less, striving always for natural expression.

Many people write in lines of 5-7-5 syllables, according to the Japanese tradition of 5-7-5 sound-symbols. However, English syllables are longer than the average Japanese sound-symbol and make for a more wordy poem.

You may wish to try writing haiku with 10-14 styllables usuing approximately a short-long-short line arrangement.

However, do not cut out so many syllables that your poem sounds as clipped as a telegram!

Haiku traditionally follow the seasons and include a "kigo" or season word. In Japan, there are "saijikis" or season word reference books with thousands of entries to help poets in each season as well as in the "New Year". While today many poems do not contain a "kigo", knowing and using them will help ou to become aware that topics for your haiku are almost inexhaustible.

SPRING - apple and cherry blossoms, tulips, lovers, sunrises, kites, melting snow, ploughing, muddy roads, lamps, chicks, tadpoles, spring rain, Vernal Equinox.

SUMMER - baseball, mayflies, camping, twilight, sort nights, gardening, ladybugs, grasshoppers, zoos, rainstorms, hot days, rainbows, swimming, hiking.

AUTUMN - falling leaves, aspects of the moon, chrysanthemums, pumpkins, sunsets, starry nights, scarecrows, autumn winds, Indian summer, cutting wood, canning.

WINTER - snowflakes, longest night, icicles, cabin feaver, Winter Solstice, pines, geese, wrapping presents, baking, Northern Lights, skiing, hothouse flowers.

Haiku work with the ordinary facts of daily life. One of the greatest surprises of this form of poetry is that in the ordinary, the everyday, you can find the sublime.

Look around you right now. What do you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell that would make a good haiku subject?