How To Write A Haiku
The haiku, because of its simplicity, is one of the few form poetry styles with which most poets experiment. However, simplicity can be deceptive and it is the very implication that a haiku is "easy" to write that invites so many poets to write technically poor haiku.
Haiku has a long history and although most people are not familiar with the tradition behind haiku poetry nor make the correlation between spiritual practice and haiku, even less people are unable to define it. A haiku is a seventeen syllable poem made up of three lines. The first and third lines are five syllables each making a 5-7-5 syllable three line poem. If a haiku were only this, a three line poem composed of seventeen syllables, then any seventeen syllable sentence would suffice and qualify as a poem. In my article, How Not to Write a Poem, I give an example of a haiku composed of a simple sentence.
I hate you mostly
when I talk to your wife on
the phone as she cries.
This meets the definition most people use to define a haiku but falls so far short of a true haiku that to label this a haiku is an insult. It fails to meet the other criteria which are often overlooked.
A haiku is not only a three line poem but it also includes an allusion to nature. This can be seen in the haiku of the masters, such as Bassho and Issa, as well as others. From a particular species of plant or animal (a cherry blossom, a hawk, a cicada, a chrysanthemum) to a clear season (harvest moon, snow, summer’s sun), there is supposed to be some allusion to the natural.
However, sometimes this is a subtle allusion. Your seasons will differ from those of other nations and traditions. In my home, growing up, we had a fake Christmas tree that stayed up year round so referencing a decorated tree had no seasonal meaning. But had I referred to a particular block party in the streets of Manhattan, anyone who grew up in my home would recognize the time of my haiku. Be aware of your own seasons, think beyond those obvious four seasons that dominate the thinking of society. Adopt and adapt your seasons to infuse your poetry with a subtlety that may elude most readers while infusing your writing with something intrinsic, personal, and potentially profound.
Haiku is intimate, a highly personal form of poetry, that is easily recognized for its immediacy in the predominance of the present moment. Some haiku may be written in the past tense, very few are written in the future tense, but most haiku is undeniably set in the present. Because of this, haiku have an emotional integrity that is often overlooked by the poet who is assuming that the haiku is an easy poem.
I learned this lesson when not writing a haiku a long time ago. I had been experimenting with sumi-e brushwork and was trying to copy the drawing of a hawk standing on a rock looking over its shoulder. Each drawing I made seemed devoid of something I could not define. The brush strokes were carefully performed, allowing for control within the freedom of the ink’s flow. My frustration grew as I tried again and again to recreate the image I had before me.
Then I stepped away, looked at the original from which I was trying to draw inspiration and wondered to myself what the hawk was thinking and feeling. In my mind it seemed to be saying it wanted to be left alone, not documented in ink. I returned to the paper, meditating on this feeling of isolation, of wanting to be alone and undisturbed. Nothing else changed. My strokes were the same, the ink I used not watered down in any way, but this time the image that I created had an energy that the previous attempts had lacked.
This should be true of your haiku; you must first feel the moment before you can write about it. You may write about something only moments passed or decades old. By drawing on the past moment, placing it into the present tense, you draw yourself and your reader into the haiku’s moment, bridging a distance between yourself and the moment and your reader so that the three become one. Honor the emotional moment and trust your reader by being subtle in how you expose yourself in the delicate lines. The very brevity of a haiku, the seventeen syllables, will force you, as a poet, to synthesize a moment into a concentrated form, condensing the emotion so that it has the same weight as it did when experienced.
For instance, I wrote a poem, Poetic Bugaboo, about a moment I experienced while frustrated with myself as a poet. The same theme could have found its way into a haiku because the insect meets the criteria for having something of nature in the poem.
Squashed gnat between the
lines of a poem written
with no real passion.
It is possible, maybe even likely, that most readers would not understand the frustration I was feeling with myself as a poet but a haiku trusts the reader to sit with the poem, meditate upon its meaning, discover the emotion of the words, and in this way writing a haiku and reading one can become a form of spiritual practice.
Most writers have learned the five W’s and an H rule: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? In writing a haiku there is a similar, often overlooked rule. Each line of the strictly traditional haiku will ideally fall into the following pattern:
Line 1: Where?
Line 2: What?
Line 3: When?
Before you balk at the strictness of this, arguing that poetry is about breaking with tradition, I offer this challenge. Try to conform to the strictest definition of the haiku, rise to the occasion and allow yourself to write a haiku that conforms to these rules, dare yourself to find freedom within the strict rules. Write seventeen syllables, broken into three lines, include a natural element, and then answer the three questions (Where? What? When?) In precisely those three lines of five-seven-five syllables. Find the freedom in the form and conformity. Trust yourself to be in the moment, write from the moment, and dare yourself to write a true haiku. And if you fall short of the purest form when writing your haiku, welcome to the club. Trust me; you are in very good company.
alone in my bed
no wishes left or dreams, dark
clouds hiding the stars
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