What the Haiku Means To Me

I have been writing poetry, almost daily for 45 years. I have cared about poetry most of my life. It has mattered to me, like football matters to some guys, or politics, or NASCAR. I remember the first time I was exposed to the haiku. It was in junior high school. The teacher thought it was such a simple form that anyone should be able to dash one off, after all, it is only three lines long, it doesn’t rhyme, and if you can count syllables and divide them into those three lines you have got yourself a sure-as-shootin’ haiku. The form has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line, and 5 syllables in the third line. The haiku in English has 17 syllables.

So the crowded classroom of bored prepubescent slugs that we were, did what we had to do to get that English teacher to move on to something else. Since it was 1965 and the Beatles were my favorite singing group I immortalized them in my first haiku.

I like the Beatles.
I think the Beatles are cool.
John. Paul, George, Ringo.

This work fits the rules, as they were described to me by an English teacher who knew almost nothing about the form, but it is a really bad haiku.

Because I cared about poetry, I explored the form more as I explored all poetic forms. I found out that the haiku is a Japanese fixed form and so it is difficult to make that form fit with the English language. For one thing, the Japanese language consists of words that are, for the most part, polysyllabic. In-other-words, in Japanese most of the words consist of multiple syllables. In English, many of our words are one syllable words. This means that while in Japanese the form may have very few words, in English the form could have as many as 17 words, if all the words selected were one syllable words.

The haiku in English is never the haiku of Japanese.

I also learned that the haiku tends to be nature based, and describing some instant. The haiku is like a snap shot of something one might glance over and see. The haiku is suppose to freezes a single moment in time the way a photograph does.

Well, in my early years as a poet, I liked narrative poetry. I wanted a poem to tell me a story. I liked The Highwaymen, Death of the Hired Hand, The Witch of Coos, and The Ancient Mariner. What could I do with 3 lines and 17 syllables? Not much. What did a snap shot poem mean to me? Nothing.

The thing is, the haiku is a reflection of Eastern thought, of the Buddhist teachings of mindfulness, and living in the present moment. Life is a moment surrounded by nothingness on both sides, just like the haiku. It is a moment. The haiku reminds me to live in the present. The haiku says this is what is happening at this moment. You have to used memory, imagination, and extrapolation to tell a story, but the truth is we live in the NOW.

How reluctantly

the bee emerges from deep

within the peony
.................................................By Basho

custody battle

a bodyguard lifts the child

to see the snow
.................................................By Dee Evetts