At last a funny AND correct article on haiku!

A big thank you to Jane Henderson for publishing a well-respected, and regularly published, haiku poet’s article.

Kudos to John (and Jane) for making this article very funny while showing how haiku really is. Haiku was and still is not an ancient form of poetry because it’s been constantly practiced since the days of Basho, and since the early 20th Western, and other non-Japanese poets have been regularly writing haiku.

Now I know a lot of teachers get it utterly wrong, and will even bring in some terrible book on bad haiku, but children and young people, be kind to them, and just get your parents to consider buying (or get out of the library) a copy of Bill Higginson’s “The Haiku Handbook” which also contains useful and easy school exercises in writing haiku.

all my very best,

Alan
“With Words”

Thank you, Jane, for giving space to a well-written piece about a genre of poetry that is wonderfully challenging. Mr. Dunphy, thank you, too, I enjoyed reading your explanations and examples. There’s a large number of poets who practice haiku, even here in the St. Louis area. I hope they migrate your way.

warm regards,
jennie

Interesting essay. I had almost forgotten how much I like reading good haiku. Thanks to John for pointing out that the tight stricture on 17 syllables is mostly relaxed these days — poetic form is always evolving. You know, Japanese is an agglutinative language, which means that its words are built up of small syllables stuck together — think of words like su-ki-ya-ki, or Hi-ro-shi-ma. So in Japanese, the focus on syllables was likely more meaningful than it ever was in English, and trying to force that format on our language may not have been a good fit in the first place.

Great information John and will keep it on file for future reference. Question, did you mean to write a small letter i instead of I in 3rd statement. John is a great author and certainly needs to keep writing, especially on local history.

This is an excellent article. I’ve seen so many posts labeled ‘haiku’ on myspace only to find three lines of prose. I don’t think many people have the slightest idea what haiku really is all about. Thanks for sharing this!

there’s a beachhead out there for haiku and john’s put up an oasis there (to mix metaphors)

many people have only a vague sense of haiku (anything in 5-7-5) so such corrective as john’s is necessary as haiku reaches a tipping point.

thank you st. louis for giving voice to the spirit of nature which everyone can tap into, thanks to lucid haiku sage john dunphy

Lovely commentary, thanks. And I’d invite folks to consider the tanka form.
Try the website for the Tanka Society of America, http://www.tankasocietyofamerica.com/

In books, both TANGLED HAIR and also INK DARK MOON come to mind, along with Rexroth’s 100 POEMS FROM THE JAPANESE.

David Lee Kirkland

Nice to read a great article on haiku. As a former high school English teacher from the early 80’s, I was thrilled if my students brought a pen to class, so go a bit easy on us! Your article will certainly encourage further exploration. Thanks.

All the best,

Bev

Thanks again John for your posting on haiku.

(And thanks Tom Cooper for contributing terms like “agglutinative language” to the ol’ book blog.)

I also say, I must support Bev George in her comment. Teachers shouldn’t be criticized too much for some of the ways they have to teach young children, who would be frightened off poetry and literature forever if all the complexities were foisted upon them at a tender age. (Of course this is my own little bugaboo - I think young kids should just be encouraged to read and write without too much harsh criticism over boring points of form until they are solidly interested in and more confident about writing and reading.)

These are the kinds of postings and comments I would love to have more of for this space: things with a regional flair or peg but not so narrow as to be uninteresting to a varied audience. So I welcome (I’ll even beg, if it works) more postings like John’s. If you have postings you think belong here, please e-mail me at jhenderson@post-dispatch.com.

Thanks again - Jane

John,

Excellent article about haiku. You are truly the area’s number-one haiku expert.

To Ms. Henderson, who said “Teachers shouldn’t be criticized too much for some of the ways they have to teach young children, who would be frightened off poetry and literature forever if all the complexities were foisted upon them at a tender age.” I will agree with that. The problem when I was in school during the 1970s and 1980s was that teachers were teaching the “classics” to the children and having them write as if it was 1850 all over again. Then when those kids began to write when they get out of high school and college, they are in for a rude awakening…language and literature made many changes over 150 years.