Haze's Haunted School for Haiku · 3:34am Sep 10th, 2021
Long ago in an ancient era, I promised to post my own advice guide on writing haiku, since I'd written a couple for a story. People liked some of them, so maybe I knew a few things that might be helpful. And I really wanted to examine some of the rules of the form, how they're used, how they're broken.
For once I actually did some research, documented my online sources. Then I lost all my files from a computer hardware error, and it took me one two years before I felt like starting over from scratch. Boooo. I'll try to keep this guide shorter than it was originally intended.
If you want an introduction to haiku, this is a great guide on the history of the form. It's fun to read, and will probably inspire you to try to write some yourself:
If you want to know how to write a great quality haiku, then I don't know how much I could help. I recommend the book Basho: The Complete Haiku, compiled by Jane Reichhold. The appendix has a great analysis of the many techniques used for haiku content (do you know the difference between wabi and sabi?). But even that book hardly includes anything about the rules of haiku.
This doesn't have much to do with haiku, but I feel like it communicates so many of the difficulties of trying to translate poetry. So much of all poetry depends on features of the language itself.
Artistic rules are a funny thing. They say you have to learn the rules before you can break them.... but I wonder what's so inherently great about breaking rules?
"Experts deviate from the guidelines, but you are not an expert (yet)."
Okay, that sounds more fair. Except... just by writing haiku in English, you're already deviating. Many of the rules translate in a weird way, or are simply impossible to follow. Even in Japanese the rules have shifted over several hundred years, and the modern form, post-Shiki, can allow just about anything.
So whether you consciously know the rules or not, you need to break them just to figure out what you're even doing with haiku!
If you want to just have fun writing your own haiku, you probably don't need to read this. It's a lot easier not having to think about this weird structural stuff...
Rhythm
For most people, all you need to write haiku is this:
https://www.haikusyllablecounter.com/
"It is the BEST Haiku syllable counter in the world."
And apparently it's the first rule that turns out to not really be a rule. There's the usual discussion of on/morae which is not quite the same as a syllable, but it's actually weirder than that.
Haiku isn't 5 7 5
It's actually 8 8 8 ... just some of them are silent.
With that, it seems so obvious how a poet could simply decide to add or subtract a beat without ruining the syllable structure, because the rests hold the rhythm together.
http://research.gendaihaiku.com/metrics/total2.html
(a long academic paper with experiments that you don't really need to read all of, but it has some nice quotes)
But wherever haiku are composed, the problem of the form must arise. Europeans and Americans have to decide whether their haiku are to be in rhyming couplets or triplets, alliterative verse, free verse, what some rude people call "a dribble of prose," or in five, seven, five syllables as in Japanese. As far as the last is concerned, a strict adherence to 5, 7, 5 syllables in English has produced some odd translations of Japanese haiku. . . . The fact is that "syllable" does not have the same meaning for the Japanese, the Romans and Greeks, and the English.
In a potato,
Those groans whose forced prayers change nought,
Can never occur
This is 5, 7, 5, but to eye and ear, and to the sense of counting, the 5, 7, 5 has no meaning whatsoever . . . . The haiku form is thus a simple and yet deeply "natural" form, compared to the sonnet, blank verse, and other borrowed forms in English. The ideal, that is, the occasionally attainable haiku form in English would perhaps be three short lines, the second a little longer than the other two; a two-three-two rhythm, but not regularly iambic or anapestic; rhyme avoided, even if felicitous and accidental. A season word is not necessary, nor even a season, but is greatly advantageous, as suggesting one quarter of the year in time (pp. 350-352).
Since this rhythm is so important to the haiku, I found that 17 english syllables were just too many, and wanted to make it as minimal as possible.... despite that most people would think it's not a haiku anymore if they can't find 17 syllables.
Music is not the universal language; rhythm is.
Plenty of people are tone-deaf, but everyone has a heartbeat.
- Chico Hamilton, Jazz drummer
A letter to Takayama Biji (1679-1718), dated June 20, 1682, is the oldest evidence of Basho's teachings. In it he wrote: "Even if you have three or four extra syllables -- or as many as five or seven -- you need not worry as long as the verse sounds right. If even one sound unit stagnates in your mouth, give it a careful scrutiny."
(Reichhold)
As a weird bonus, I found some haiku on the labels for Japanese bottled tea. The best ones were shortened, as well as even written on one line instead of three.
Which I mentally compared to this haiku I found in a (bad) published science fiction story, where the rhythm just sounds awkward:
“A dandelion
In late autumn’s cooling breeze
Spreads seeds far and wide.”
Juxtaposition
When I was still stuck on the idea of needing exactly 17 syllables, I also felt like I had to include excess adjectives and descriptors just to fill up space. They were the first things I wanted to cut out.
East Asian communication (and culture) is known as "high-context", where you're expected to read between the lines as much as possible. In other words, don't be direct, it's so cringe. Probably based on how many rules of the languages don't have certain kinds of specificity that English takes for granted, for example a lack of plurals (A frog? Several frogs? All the frogs? THE frog?). Haiku embraces that indirectness and uses it.
So the purpose of juxtaposition is to not put too much baggage on any single object, but to show this by its relationship to other things in the poem. Does rainfall symbolize sadness? Maybe to some people, but others might think it's refreshing. Or calming. Or inconvenient. You can't assume how the reader would interpret that "symbolism", but with juxtaposition you can guide them towards the proper context.
two won't fit
in the little shrine...
Fifth Month rain
darting to the beat
of the downpour...
a swallow
And one mistake I made early on was taking this rule too literally, needing to describe two different scenes going on. I found it easier to be as minimal as possible, because even the gentlest suggestion could be juxtaposition for the main subject.
Seasonal Word
A rule that people are vaguely familiar with, like you gotta stick some nature-related thing in the haiku for it to count. A common mistake is to use it as a simile - "beautiful like the flowers" - the seasonal word isn't actually present in the scene. Instead of an image of flowers, it's just an abstract comparison for something else which doesn't literally look like a flower.
The role of the seasonal word is to anchor the poem to a time of year by association. It doesn't have to be the main focus, but it should color everything around it through juxtaposition. The seasons are temporary, but also cyclical. If a haiku can feel like a specific snapshot of a short-lived moment, it can also feel timeless because of how simple and mundane the seasonal words are used. It's not something unique, it could happen anywhere, even to you.
There's huge lists of seasonal word and the times of year they're attached to, but it's not exhaustive. Depending on where you live in the world, a lot of them might not mean much to you because of culture or climate. What do you do then? Create new ones, based on what's around you. Though if your home is stuck in winter for most of the year, then maybe the cycle of "time" doesn't produce the right haiku effect. Tricky!
This is why the rule is sometimes broken by using special locations. Anchoring the poem in space instead of time. The place isn't going to change much from year to year, but the idea is that your visit is temporary. Unless you live there, but then you won't think it's so special after a while.
One technique Issa rarely used was no seasonal word at all. The poem would become free and have no attachment, but usually not in a positive way. To me they feel uneasy and lonely, and there's an implication that he's pondering death and the afterlife...
[q]without you --
the grove
is just a grove[/q]
Cutting Words
These are a kind of verbal punctuation, but punctuation itself is kind of bizarre. They weren't really formalized in writing until the movable type printing press, so it's a relatively recent invention. Even more recent for being introduced to east Asian writing systems.
Look at ancient writing such as Latin, and there's no punctuation or even word spacing. Sometimes there's an interpunct (the single dot), but there was no consistent system for how to use these. So they also used words as punctuation.
This is the idea that there must be two parts to a haiku. We call these parts "the phrase" and "the fragment." A correcty translated haiku will make the break between the two parts clear with the use of grammar. Some writers who cannot make the break clear with structure will use punctuation marks -- a dash, a comma, ellipsis, or even a period.
(from Reichhold)
This is another rule that apparently has controversial solutions. Imply the punctuation, show it directly, use a verbal sound instead... nobody can agree. And just like kigo, there's so many kireji in use. The theory I found most interesting on why there's so many yet they don't have any clearly defined meaning, is that they're meant to be idiosyncratic.
It's a reminder that you're not reading a perfectly objective scene of nature. You're seeing this through the observer, the poet. The cutting word is just a piece of language to try to organize these thoughts, and without that the haiku is missing something important.
Collaboration
Haiku originated as the opening verse of a longer poem, like in tanka or renga. It's meant to be collaborative, the next writer would continue it. Much like a writing prompt for a contest. The better the opening, more interesting results would be produced. Even though haiku itself has become its own thing, with no collaboration intended, so this isn't even really.
In general I think it's an easy mistake to try to pack as much as possible into a haiku, all the imagery you see in your head. And not just because the rhythm and imagery can get unwieldy. It's supposed to feel incomplete, and inspire the reader to fill in the blank with their own conclusion. It'll be unique for everyone, but the original haiku should guide them in the general direction intended by the author. I'm reminded of the literary concept of the implied author, the way a haiku becomes a dialogue between the poet and reader.
One reason why it took me so long from starting to write this, to finishing and posting it, is this all just makes me more uncertain than ever on my own haiku writing. Or writing in general. I kept wanting to complete this, but felt uncomfortable by how few answers I could provide. It's more of a guide on how to get lost!
So why even bother to stick to these classical rules, in an attempt to seem authentic? They're nebulous and don't translate well, and most people only look for 5,7,5 and won't notice them. Alternatively, why's it so important to break the rules?
The best I can figure out is that the rules don't really exist anyway, it's just in your head, so there's no use trying to rebel against them. Create your own 'rules', if you're confident that they lead to someplace you find interesting.
This was a really fascinating read. I freely admit my experience with haiku is quite minimal, so learning more about it is always a plus.