my personal history with haiku
I’ve known about haiku since I was a kid. Back then I was told, and I’d always believed, that a haiku is a 3-line poem with a syllable count of 5-7-5. That’s just not right.
The only haiku I can remember having written before 2023 was from the late 1970s:
loud yelling voices
the ring lies on the floor
still, unremembered
As I typed that out just now, I think, it’s not bad, for a kid with little personal experience with romantic relationships. Of course, it could be better.
With the word “yelling”, do I need either “loud” or “voices”? Or might “angry voices” be a better choice? The ring already “lies” on the floor. Do I need to say it’s “still”? And why is the ring already unremembered? The (presumed) argument just took place, and surely the people haven’t forgotten the ring already.
Here is a rewrite that only changes two words, but makes me feel better about this haiku.
loud angry voices
the ring lies on the floor
love unremembered
Angry voices don’t need to be loud, but these are, so I say it. And it’s very possible that love can be unremembered in a moment.
the haiku sandwich
As a bit of an aside, I want to say that this haiku is also an example of what I call a “haiku sandwich”.
A haiku sandwich combines two standalone couplets that share the center line. So we have couplet #1:
loud angry voices
the ring lies on the floor
It’s a complete story, or set of alternate stories.
A couple argued, and one of them took off and tossed a ring significant to the relationship to the floor. Or maybe one of them was about to give the other a ring, and the argument caused the ring to be discarded. Maybe the story is that the argument is about the lost ring, and if only the people arguing could remember that love is more important than a ring…
Then we have couplet #2 from the ring’s (and love’s) perspective:
the ring lies on the floor
love unremembered
I feel power there, and this couplet raises questions like:
- Why is the ring still on the floor?
- Why is the ring on the floor at all?
- Who forgot the love?
- Or is it the ring who’s forgotten the love?
Upon discovering haiku sandwiches, I often rewrite to construct one, if the original concept for the haiku lends itself to that.
editing haiku
There are schools of thought that say, “Don’t rewrite.” They claim the spirit of haiku is that it is in the moment. (I don’t have a citation for that, but I remember reading it.)
I am not of that school of thought.
In fact, I don’t see much point in writing anything if I’m not going to edit it. Witness the edit history in just about anything I post to Facebook.
I’m working with someone on a website, and they are a good writer, which is to say that what they spit out onto a page is cohesive and understandable. However, they need editing. Fortunately I love editing!
capitalization and punctuation in haiku
My personal choice is not to use capital letters in my haiku unless I include a proper noun that is not the word “i”. I keep “i” in lowercase. (See more about my use of personal pronouns in my haiku below.)
I’m not sure that I have a good reason for this lack of capitalization outside the fact that I like the way it looks. In fact, when building this website, I had the whole thing, including this article, in lowercase, because I thought it was a cool aesthetic. However, I didn’t like the lack of readability, so I switched to normal sentence case for prose.
As far as punctuation goes, I don’t use it in haiku unless I need it for clarity. A comma here and there. I’ve also used a colon, and I often use a double dash or an em dash to signal a break or a leap.
The break in Japanese haiku is called kireji. Usually translated to English as “the cutting word”, kireji creates either a pause or simply a break in the rhythm of the haiku, and often signals a leap, creating a juxtaposition between two seemingly dissimilar things that requires a bit of imagination to find the similarity.
must haiku be 3 lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables?
Despite my love of writing and early exposure to the simple art of haiku, I never thought of haiku as a way of life or even an artistic pursuit until I attended an online offering presented by the Upaya Zen Center called The Way of Haiku (from which I derived the name of this website). It was at that workshop that I began to understand, among other things, that haiku does not need to fit into a 3-line, 5-7-5 structure.
Three lines. Line one is five syllables. Line two is seven syllables. Line three is five syllables. That’s old-school western thinking.
Japanese haiku follow a pattern of 17 sounds that may be written in one line or three lines. But the Japanese language is not like English in syntax or structure. Suffice to say that the 17-sounds pattern does not translate well to English.
For that reason, most modern English-language haiku breaks severely from tradition.
Consider the extreme with what is thought by many to be a one-word haiku masterpiece:
tundra
Cor van den Heuvel
When I view this haiku on a (mostly) blank page — that is another way modern English-language haiku breaks from tradition, by playing with the placement of the words on the page — I can feel the impact. Do I fully get it? Nah. But there it is.
The upshot is that I don’t feel too restricted by syllables. I still tend to want to write three lines. And I still want the middle line to be longer than the other two, even though sometimes it’s not — and that’s okay.
I like this quote from Natalie Goldberg’s book Three Simple Lines (see it listed on my Haiku Resources page) about counting syllables:
I think it’s good to be aware of both: counting and not counting. If I didn’t count a bit, rein in each line, I’d end up galloping into a short story. And if I only cared about syllables, I’d have a block of words with no soul.
Natalie Goldberg on page 120 of Three Simple Lines
what is the way of haiku?
After careful consideration, this is my current take on what a good haiku is. Please note that I will change this as I practice more and learn more. Also note that some of my favorite haiku, written by myself and others, disregard at least some of these guidelines.
conservation
Haiku does not waste words.
This is probably my #1 guiding principle and the one I’ll break the least, if at all. I want every word, every sound, in a haiku I write, to be meaningful.
observation
Haiku is a physical observation of a moment. A blooming flower. A fallen branch. A heavy rain. An icy sidewalk. A speeding car. A resting cat.
I break this one a lot. I’ll write haiku about something I’ve imagined, or about something I’ve felt, rather than something I’ve observed physically.
objectivity
There is no judgment in haiku. No spirituality. No assumption. No ego.
I break this all the time. In fact, I don’t know why I’ve even included “objectivity” here. After all, this is my take on “the way of haiku”, but I don’t honor objectivity much. Maybe I think of it as an ideal?
I like to write from my own emotional experiences, and I like to read pieces based others’ emotional experiences. Some of my favorite haiku break the “objectivity” guideline.
For example, this poem that haiku master Kobayashi Issa wrote about the death of his daughter brings tears to my eyes every time, and if that is not the definition of great art, I don’t know what is.
(Great art, but maybe not great haiku? Hmm… Issa’s poem is considered great haiku. Maybe I’m over stating the ideal of objectivity.)
This dewdrop world—
Kobayashi Issa as translated by Lewis Mackenzie
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .
In my haiku, I like keeping “i”, when referring to myself, in lowercase. Maybe that is a way to keep things personal with the understanding that my self is not as important as the rest of the haiku’s content. The “i” is only there to indicate that this from my perspective.
I know that in my learning about haiku, I’ve heard the concept that haiku writers don’t need to include references to themselves, because one of the basics of haiku is that it is a personal observation, so self-reference is not necessary — it’s understood who’s perspective this is. I can dig that. However, when I tried to observe that in my own haiku, I found that I sometimes needed a personal pronoun to get my point across.
So I use “i”, “me”, “my”.
I acknowledge, then, that objectivity is to me one of the least important of the haiku “rules”, maybe just ahead of “5-7-5”. But I think it’s interesting to try to write haiku objectively, and I often do.
simplicity
The observation is the star of the haiku, not the words used to describe it. I read somewhere that haiku is noun-driven. I can dig that.
Haiku is not a flowery, overly poetic art form. I focus on recreating the observation in the simplest possible terms.
connection
My place in nature, in the world, can often be found in the simple observation of something found in my natural world. My goal is to find the connections between me and my world, as I did here.
That is the part of the haiku called the “jump” or “leap” or any number of other terms. It’s the part that follows (or sometimes precedes) the “–“.
Consider this by haiku master Yosa Buson:
Calligraphy of geese
Yosa Buson, as translated by Robert Hass
against the sky –
the moon seals it.
What does it mean to you?
I don’t succeed often, but I try to find the connection in the form of a leap. I learned about the leap at the Upaya workshop I’ve mentioned before, and which you can find on my Haiku Resources page.
The leap is hard to explain. It’s connecting two dissimilar things by finding similarity.
For example, I wrote the following haiku as Canadian wildfires continued to destroy trees and other flora and fauna:
red morning sky —
Steve Circeo
a tulip opens
a tree dies
The red morning sky is beautiful. The leap comes from the fact that it’s the destructive wildfires that cause that red morning sky, and while the sun is opening a tulip, at the same time trees are being killed by the fires.
acceptance
The haiku I produce are my haiku. They will not always be good, even by my own standards, but I accept them for what they are.
Does that mean I won’t ever edit haiku I write? I repeat what I wrote above: I do enjoy editing!
what does all this mean about haiku?
This is my take on haiku. Use what suits you and leave the rest behind.
Much like yoga, I feel that writing haiku is a very personal practice.
My life is consumed with haiku. I think in haiku. I look for haiku opportunities. If you see me out and about, and if you ask, I will produce a haiku on demand about anything, anytime, anywhere. I won’t vouch for the quality of haiku I produce under those conditions, but that’s all part of my practice.
i love haiku —
Steven Circeo
it’s a way of life
that fills my soul