HAIKU HITS
http://www.haikupoetshut.com/
http://www.gardendigest.com/poetry/haiku6.htm
http://www.haikuspirit.org/
http://www.haikuhut.com/
The Memory Tree… hanging haikus on a tree: 60 years after the end of World War
II, in Sandhurst, England, 2005, students meet in a local memorial park
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OBXcxQXvq0&NR=1
Want some black-and-white beatnik jazz sax and Jack Kerouac doing an American haiku
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJdxJ5llh5A&feature=related
You have to see these adorable Japanese/Canadian hockey nut brothers recite their hocky
haiku (big fans of the Vancouver Canucks!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5SDFF0sp_Q
This video might help you write:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLX3cS-14zs&feature=related
Under the Torii***
****According to Molloy, “a gatelike structure that marks a Shinto sacred
place.”
The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets
(Shambhala Centaur Editions) (Paperback)
Basho's Narrow Road: Spring & Autumn Passages: Narrow Road to
the Interior
and the Renga Sequence: A Farewell Gift to Sora: Two Works (Rock Spring
Collection of Japanese Literature) (Paperback)
bashō. “Banana” or “plantain.” This small tree rarely bears fruit in Japan. Because of its certain fragility,
it has become a metaphor in Japan for impermanence. This pen name was deliberately chosen for its
vulnerability, and “selflessness.” Understandably, the word also means “autumn.”
HaiKu linkS, etc.
Helpful, but Jane Reichhold gets a bit tiring.
http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm
This is kind of cool: modern haiku, and a journal produced in Evanston!
http://www.modernhaiku.org/
From Great Britain…and just when I thought this might be geared more to primary and secondary
school students, I discovered that the section on poetic forms is quite good…and a great section on
Zen and Haiku…See also the section on, “The Thing, the Moment, and the Spirit,” ***** very highly
recommended
http://www.haiku.insouthsea.co.uk/index.htm
“Haiku-guy” is no slouch, which I must admit was my initial reaction. He is actually a scholar, and
translates Haiku from Japanese… Especially fond of Issa…
http://haikuguy.com/issa/index.html
For instance, under “Fun with Issa,” visitors to the site are invited to key in any number from 1 to
8,500… I entered “13,” thinking of our superstition exercise, and this is what came up:
fussing, fussing
in the blossom shade...
gamblers
What about this one from Issa?
a bath when you're born,
a bath when you die,
how stupid
Click here for a good, quick overview of haiku:
http://haikuguy.com/issa/abouthaiku.html
Haiku all over the world! http://digilander.libero.it/haikol/multicoloured%20haikus.htm
Hopefully helpful Haiku-writing Hints
Writing haiku in English is more difficult than it looks.
As it has been said, haiku is easy to imitate, but hard
to attain.
Commonly it is understood to be a short poem of
three lines totaling 17 syllables, following a 5-7-5
scheme.
Think compression and suggestiveness.
It can be thought of as including three components: a
“now” experience; related to or connecting nature to
the human condition; in which there is an immediate
apprehension of some insight.
To round that off, there is an intimacy with nature, a
certain oneness with the one looking on, and then an
emotional experience as the one looking on
apprehends “it” just as “it” happens. Like a flash, like
a click of a camera shutter.
So the haiku might have in view a frog, a firefly, an
autumn moon, a yew tree, a river, a winter wind, but
it’s the realization of some truth that stirs in the one
looking on an object of thing of nature at that moment.
Like a thought that comes to you from out of nowhere.
I get the impression that a haiku doesn’t moralize or fill in all the details for you…
Our English language can get heavy, detracting from the lightness, or fine brush stroke that
obviously works best in Japanese. Haiku guy comments on this challenge: “Most haiku poets
writing in English don’t follow the 5-7-5 syllable rule. Seventeen syllables of English could
potentially add up to 17 separate words, making it too long and lessening its intensity.”
(http://haikuguy.com/issa/abouthaiku.html)
Anitra, at “Haiku in Low Places” (http://anitraweb.org/kalliope/haiku.html, talks about a Zen
paradox: “one is completely empty of a sense of being or self,” while at the same time, one is
“completely self-aware.” There is a heightened awareness intensified in a single moment. Anitra
also points out that “the haiku should be no longer than the duration of a breath…”
In “An Introduction to Haiku,” (http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/5022/?200810), we are
told that haiku should be approached with a daily sort of reverence, as we might approach an
encounter with a great spiritual teacher. Here is another way to consider the features of the
form:
Haiku should consider everyday experiences
commonplace events
written in conversational style using colloquial idiom, but not slang or vulgarities
As Beverly White notes, “Zen is your everyday life!”
Haiku should be natural.
Again, White: “Submerge yourself into the object until its intrinsic nature becomes
apparent, stimulating poetic impulse” (Sanzoshi).
Immerse yourself in that moment, and in a zen state of mind that, as Senzaki Roshi
warned, permits “no secondary thoughts.”
Note this description of Japanese arts:
This aesthetic is echoed in the testimonies of other fine artists in the Japanese tradition:
painters, potters, sculptors. There are folk tales describing the tiger, for instance, that was so
realistically painted it walked out of the painting and disappeared! And the Japanese have a
word for the state of mind out of which genuine creativity arises: zammai, which is the
Japanese rendering of the Sanskrit word samadhi. Only if the artist can totally lose his
discriminatory sense of me/other—for even a brief period of time—can he hope to have
grasped the essential nature of the object he would like to express or re-create on paper or
canvas.
(The Beverly White article is referenced in Haiku hits or Haiku links at the Minnesota Zen
Center website. It is a great piece on haiku and zen.)
To add to what has already been listed above, we conclude with a few more hints and
pointers “for beginners and others,” by J. W. Hackett, author of the 1964 publication,
Haiku Poetry.
1. Life is the fount of the haiku experience. So take note of this present moment.
2. Contemplate natural objects closely.
3. Identify (interpenetrate) with your subject, whatever it might be: “That art Thou.”
(Remember that phrase from the Upanishad about Brahman/Atman compared to the salt
dissolving in and becoming one with water?)
4. Reflect in solitude and quiet on your notes of nature. I think the zen mind comes into
play here… the clear, uncluttered mind that does not overthink…that does not allow
secondary thoughts.
5. Do not forsake the Suchness of things—nature should be reflected just as it is.
6. Express your experience in syntax natural to English.
7. The Japanese 5-7-5 does not necessarily translate well into English. At least try to write
in three lines, with a maximum of 17 syllables.
8. (This one is crucial!) Suggest, but make sure you give the reader enough to go on, for
the haiku that confuses, fails.
9. Mention season when possible, as this adds dimension.
10. Simplify. Also, in conjunction with #9, never use obscure allusions. Haiku are more
intuitive; not intellectual (such as the style of Wallace Stevens).
11. Don’t overlook humor, but avoid mere wit. God forbid, don’t be cute!
12. Rhyme and other poetic devices should never be so obvious that they detract from the
content.
13. Lifelikeness, not beauty, is the real quality of haiku.
14. Word choice should be governed by meaning. Never sacrifice clarity for artifice. Be
clear, be clear, be clear. Only from clarity can implication naturally flow.
15. Every word counts. Be fussy about the sparse words you choose.
16. Read each verse aloud. You’ll hear what doesn’t work.
17. Stay with it until it’s just right.
18. Remember R. H. Blyth’s admonition that haiku is a finger pointing at the moon, and if the
hand is bejeweled, we no longer see that to which it points.
So take a moment, and an emotion, and nature, and a
season, and an insight, and write a haiku!
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