‘The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps . . . so that something

that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.”

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Well, welcome back to 2024. I hope you enjoyed the last post concerning Mr. Poe because I certainly did. I thought today I would begin talking about haikus. The current requirements for haikus are a first line with five syllables, a second line with seven syllables, and a third line of five syllables. When I first discovered the haiku I thought the rigidity of this design didn’t make a lot of sense. The more I learned about haikus the wiser I thought I became. Here are two examples of haiku’s written by a gentleman from Japan who is considered the father of haikus, Matsuo Kinsaku (1644-1694). He began writing haikus under the name of Basho in 1672. In Basho’s humble opinion a haiku should be created using a minimum of words to paint a mental picture for the reader. Basho included descriptions of nature in most of his haikus but wasn’t limited to a fixed syllable count. I’m all for free-verse haiku’s but I still find the nature requirement of Basho a bit restrictive. Here are couple of samples of Basho’s haikus published in the 1680’s. See what you think.

Spring rain –

under trees

a crystal stream.

***

On the dead limb

squats a crow –

autumn night.

The structure of haikus as mentioned above were created by two poets, Sokan (1458-1546) and Moritake (1472-1549). In Basho’s opinion their works were terse but failed to adequately evoke nature. Three hundred years later a haiku school, the Soun, was opened celebrating Basho’s free-verse approach. The haiku should be based on content not on the number of syllables in each line. With this I whole heartedly agree.

Here is a little something I discovered recently. It’s shows the form of a free-verse haiku but was simply published as a standard poem. References to nature are gone offering a more interesting take on life, love, and people.

we are the dreamers

we are the dancers

life is the music

love is the song.

For all of you Star Trek fans out there, this was written some years ago by Leonard Nimoy and was included in his book of poetry “A Lifetime of Love” published in 2002.