Westernized Haiku
Continued discussion of Haiku from last post.
One of the problems with writing haiku and other Japanese form poetry (such as senryu and tanka) in English is that the flow of the English language is markedly different from that of Japanese.
Often the form doesn’t work nearly as well in English.
For this reason, in the 1970s many English-speaking poets began writing “free-form haiku” which does not rigidly follow the 5-7-5 rule, but still tries to follow the “inspired” and imagistic quality of the Japanese poetry, and also attempts to retain some of the techniques often used by the Japanese poets as well, such as sensory language or word play.
The lines of the poem must follow natural breaks in the language; in other words, a sentence should not be broken into two lines at an unnatural place – which is why English haikus often work better when they deviate from the strict Japanese form.
The following English haiku has seventeen syllables and uses visual imagery to describe natural objects.
moving into the sun
the pony takes with him
some mountain shadow
–Jane Reichhold, 1996
Look for some info on “Tanka” poems tomorrow…