Hi, I'm Mr. Sato. Let's talk about haiku.
You probably wrote haiku in elementary school,
and that's a good place to start learning about haiku.
A child can easily master two of the elements of a good traditional haiku:
the number of syllables and the subject matter.
But there's more to haiku than that. Haiku is a serious poetic form written by adults
for adults, so it's wrong to dismiss it as poetry for little kids.
I like to teach it in high school.
Now, I'm not great at writing haiku, but I think I can help you take the next step.
First, the basics: syllables. Here's a definition.
Couldn't be clearer, right?
It's a lot easier to understand it if I give you some examples.
"Water," is two syllables. "wa" is the first syllable, and "ter" is the second syllable.
"Misunderstanding" has five syllables.
Mis - un - der - stan - ding. Five.
Now it's clear, right?
If in doubt, you can check a dictionary to see how many syllables a word has.
In this dictionary, these little dots separate the syllables
But it can be trickier than you think:
for example, in the dictionary, "soil" is one syllable, not two. But pause this video
and try saying that as one syllable: "soil." Still kinda sounds like two, right?
In the dictionary, the word "interesting" is four syllables, but when I say it the way
I normally do, it sure sounds like three to me. I don't say "in-ter-es-ting,"
I say "intresting."
I have a similar problem with "chocolate" and "different."
The dictionary is generally the last word on syllable counts,
but I think that sometimes you just have to go with your ear.
I know some teachers will disagree with me, but if you hear
a word as a certain number of syllables, and are pretty sure
everyone but Daniel Webster would agree with you,
then go with your ear.
Poetry must be sensitive to language the way we actually hear it and experience it.
And if you're worried about your grade, check with your teacher first.
Now that we've established what a syllable is, we can talk about 5 - 7 - 5.
A traditional haiku is an unrhymed poem that is written in three lines,
and consists of seventeen syllables exactly.
Line 1 is five syllables long, line 2 is
seven syllables long, and line 3 is five syllables long.
To be honest, according to Cor van den Heuvel, most poets writing
in English these days stray from these rules,
being more interested in capturing the essence of haiku than in following
a strict syllable count. These are sometimes called "liberated haiku."
If you want to know about this kind of haiku, this anthology is a good source.
But I think a traditional haiku is a really useful exercise for people
needing to learn how to use language with more discipline and economy.
And if you want to write a traditional haiku,
then you must follow these syllable counts: 5 - 7 - 5. That's the first, and
best known, element of a haiku.
The second element is subject matter. These days, haiku are written about
everything, and I mean everything.
Like this one.
What's funny is that they always always follow the 5-7-5 rule, I guess because
it's the only haiku-like thing about them.
But a traditional haiku has something to do with nature. It doesn't have to be 100%
about nature, but it shouldn't be an abstract idea, like "freedom is not free."
It should take place in the natural, physical world,
not the world of abstract ideas.
The haiku also usually contains one seasonal word, called a kigo --
"spring," "summer," "autumn," "snow,"
"icicles," "sunflowers," even "baseball" because baseball is a spring sport.
American football takes place in the fall.
The following haiku was written by Kaga no Chiyo, Japan's most famous woman
writer of haiku. It was translated into English by R. H. Blyth.
It's translated from the Japanese, so in Japanese it followed the 5-7-5 rule.
But do you see that because there a flower and dew,
we can infer that it's probably springtime,
on a cool morning, cool enough for dew to form.
It is cold enough for dew in the fall, too,
but most flowers aren't blooming in autumn, are they?
So this poem takes place in a specific season, out in nature.
You could refer to the hot sun and the grass under your bare feet,
and we'd know it was summer. Get the idea?
So a traditional haiku is set in nature in some way,
and takes place in a specific season.
And now we get to structure, the part that I've seen in the poems, but that I haven't
seen taught in classrooms. Good haiku, like all good writing, has a structure.
It isn't long enough for a beginning, middle, and end,
really, but there are two parts. What I've seen in haiku is
that it has some kind of shift or movement from the beginning to the end.
First, it opens with a clear, sensory image.
Then, in the second part, there's usually some kind of surprise or sudden insight.
(Insight means a deep and personal understanding
of something.) And here's a tip -- poets sometimes
use a long dash to separate these two parts, and it doesn't add a syllable.
In Kago no Chiyo's haiku, she creates an image of a red flower (rouge means red)
that has gathered dew in its cup
and on its petals. It's an image of natural beauty. There aren't
many people who would look at that flower and not say, "wow, that's nice."
That's the first part, the sensory image.
Then, she shows that when the dew is spilled out of the flower,
it's just plain water.
The thing that was so beautiful on the flower, is just ordinary
when separated from it.
See, there's a movement from the image to an insight about it.
It's definitely possible to overanalyze a haiku, but from this poem you might infer
a meaning or theme from it, such as, a thing is special in a certain context,
but removed from its natural setting,
it can become meaningless and dull. Like, let's say your friend has a chunk of
broken concrete on his bookcase. It's just a piece of concrete, like something
you'd find on the street. But if you found out that it was a piece of the Berlin Wall
that made world headlines when it was torn down in 1989, well, now it's special.
It wasn't special when it was
disassociated from the Berlin Wall, and it was special when it was.
Just like the water is nothing special when separated from the rouge flower.
Some things are valuable not because of their intrinsic value,
but because of their context.
You see, you can get a lot meaning out of seventeen syllables.
Here's another one I like. This translator retained the 5-7-5 syllable count.
In this haiku, there's an expectation created. You experience
being a person outdoors at night,
looking up at a sky that's described as lonely, which is more a reflection of the
speaker's own emotional state than a description of an actual sky, right?
A sky can't be lonely.
It's autumn, so the air is cool. Now, in your imagination, feel the coolness of the air,
and hold on to his feeling of loneliness, now your loneliness.
Next, you, seeing through the speaker's eyes, are looking to see where the moon is.
The expectation is that you'll find the moon, of course.
But after the long dash, you see lights burning in a castle
up on the mountainside instead. There's a little surprise.
Now, looking out through the eyes of Mr. Santoka, what do you feel
when you get this surprise? Are you pleased?
Disappointed? Remember, in the previous line you were feeling lonely.
Maybe the lights mean there are people there and relief from your loneliness.
Maybe not. It depends on the reader, really.
You and I might have very different responses to the same event,
and that's what life is like, isn't it?
But the important thing for this lesson here is that, just like in the poem
about the dew, there's a shift in mood from the first part,
feeling lonely and looking for the moon, and the second part,
seeing something you didn't expect. That tension or movement is necessary
for the haiku to be really dynamic, to be really alive and meaningful. It's like how
a sonnet has a "turn" or "volta" between the first part and the last part.
If the poet just describes a pretty scene, it's like an unfinished thought. It's static
and lifeless. Even an alert and sensitive reader might think,
"yeah, it's pretty, so what?"
because it lacks structure and movement.
One note on this: make sure when you think up the little surprise at the end
that it isn't totally random.
It has to make sense in the context of the poem. It shouldn't be
something irrelevant and out-of-the-blue. Like this one.
I gotta admit, that made me smile, but, really, it's a perfect example
of a poem that contains a shift that is completely random and meaningless.
Please don't do this, even if it's funny.
And by the way, the Japanese word haiku can be singular or plural;
you don't add an "s" to make it plural.
Lastly, a haiku should not rhyme. Rhyming draws the reader's attention
to the language, but haiku should be transparent,
like a lens that lets you see something clearly. A rhyme is like a fingerprint
on the glass saying "hey, look at this!" So no rhyming, please.
That's a lot of talk about a tiny poem, I know. But that's the magic of the haiku.
You can unpack a haiku and find a whole world in there.
Just remember there are three parts to a strong traditional haiku:
the 5-7-5 syllable count, the subject matter,
and the two-part structure.
Enjoy writing your haiku! Let the world look through your eyes and feel what
you feel for just one brilliant moment!