Haiku

It’s snowing Haiku.

50 Comments

It’s only weather.
Not a sign of climate change.
But it’s snowing now.

We often notice the first snow around here. It’s snowing lightly right now. No accumulation so far. Even if we get an inch it won’t be a record. Still… a bit early. Meanwhile the leaves on most my trees remain totally, completely green. That said: No one lives in Chicago for the weather.

50 thoughts on “It’s snowing Haiku.”

  8. I find it tricky
    To write a weather Haiku
    Because I always seem to get too many words in the last line

  13. I just wanted you guys (especially Lucia) to know that my mom cleaned my Original Blackboard “Hide The Decline” Global Warming Mug today and the years of tea and coffee stains that had built up on it are gone. It’s fresh and clean and ready for another decade of use.

    Andrew

  14. Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
    And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

  16. There was a young man named Regina
    who sailed on a slow boat to China.
    He was trapped at the tiller by a sex-starved gorilla.
    By God; it’s a long way to China.

  18. A repost from Ju
    dith Curry’s blog. No one liked
    it then. Nor will they:

    “I so hate haiku
    An ugly rhythm that then
    Seems to stop just as”

  19. There once was a lass from Australia,
    Who painted her *** like a dahlia,
    Tuppence a smell
    Went down quite well,
    But sixpence a lick was a failure.

  21. One of my favorites, I think this is one of Isaac Asimov’s:

    There once was a member of MENSA,
    Who was a most excellent fencer.
    The sword that he used
    Was his [line is refused,
    And has now been removed by the censor]

  22. Which raises the question whether he is pronouncing MENSA men-sur or fencer and censor as fen-sah and sen-sah.

    I don’t have an ear for poetry, so I can’t really offer anything.

  23. Issac Asimov once assembled a collection of 1700 limericks into a book entitled “The Limerick” under the pen name of G. Legman.

    A review of The Limerick is on Amazon.

    The reviewer regrets that the limericks he wanted to quote from the book could not get past Amazon’s censors.

  24. James Evans
    People who hate haiku should feel free to write sonnets.

    Poetry lover, you who disdains the haiku
    feel free to write a poem of your own.
    and from your pinnacle of perfection, let it be known
    you think other forms of rhyme are poo,
    that she who writes haiku is an old crone
    who should be banned from internet and limited to phone.
    because being heard in public is not something she should do.

    Then in public post your work
    so that all can marvel when they see
    your clarity of expression cutting through the murk
    that clouds their mind; your words will set them free.
    Or maybe some who read will only smirk,
    and say, I laughed so hard, that almost made me pee!

  25. Andrew_FL:

    Asimov, lived in the Northeast, so it could go either way.

    I’ve heard people from the northeast United States adding “R” sounds to the end of words (and sometimes syllables) that didn’t belong and drop “R” sounds that were supposed to be there. Knowing Asimov’s clever wit, this could have been an inside joke.

    Beta Blocker, Asimov also has some of the best collections of humor (not just Limericks) that I’ve seen.

  28. Carrick,
    I suspect you can thank my middle school teachers for assigning poetry writing. I’m sure middle school teachers quickly learn that the poetic form does not automatically enforce quality, either good or bad.

    One problem with James Evans example of a haiku is… it is not a haiku. It’s not even a bad haiku. The difficulty is that some people think any series of 17 syllables ‘is’ a haiku, but that is not so. At wikipedia we can read:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

    1. The essence of haiku is “cutting” (kiru).[1] This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji (“cutting word”) between them,[2] a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colors the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related.
    2. Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae), in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on respectively.[3] Any one of the three phrases may end with the kireji.[4] Although haiku are often stated to have 17 syllables,[5] this is inaccurate as syllables and on are not the same.
    3. A kigo (seasonal reference), usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such words.

    So, the essence is this “cutting” thing. Technically, some of my haiku’s don’t succeed because the cutting is wrong (thought I try to put punctuation at the end of either the 1st or 2nd line.) But then, mine don’t always deal with the seasons which maybe violates the whole ‘haiku’ thing too.

    Possibly, mine should be

    Mid October snow
    a sign of early winter,
    but not climate change.

    Winter is then the “cutting” word. and it breaks from a “weather” to a “sciency” issue.

  30. Lucia, that just illustrates how little I understand about formal poetry. And my middle-school teacher for that matter. 😉

  31. Lucia –
    (#120530) I hate to nitpick, but aren’t you missing a line of your second quatrain?

    And thanks for your description of haiku (#120535). [Yes, I know it’s from Wiki. But you did the work to put it in front of us.] I don’t think the “rules” were ever explained, but it was apparent to me that certain attempts weren’t “real” haiku. Now I know why.

  32. Nice to discuss poetry instead of discussing impending doom…. from very rapid warming, 2 meters per century sea level increase, or draconian (nutso) fossil fuel restrictions. Maybe, if we are lucky, the pause will extend to green political extremism. (I won’t hold my breath. 😉 )

  34. Poetry lover, you who disdains the haiku
    feel free to write a poem of your own.
    and from your pinnacle of perfection, let it be known
    you think other forms of rhyme are poo.
    Here’s another thing you could do,
    tell she who writes haiku she is a crone
    who should be banned from internet and limited to phone.
    because being heard in public is not something she should do.

    Then in public post your work
    so that all can marvel when they see
    your clarity of expression cutting through the murk
    that clouds their mind; your words will set them free.
    Or maybe some who read will only smirk,
    and say, I laughed so hard, that almost made me pee!

  36. @Beta Blocker,

    I can see the resulting article title now:

    That Haiku Didn’t Include Cherry Blossoms, So Climate Change Is A Hoax

  38. Leaves changing colour,
    October storms are coming;
    Time for the blower.

    Yeah, almost the same as before, but apparently adding the semicolon as a kireji turns it into real Haiku.

    Who knew?

  40. For the limerick lovers:
    .
    A pansy up in Khartoum,
    took a lesbian up to his room.
    They argued all night,
    as to who had the right
    to do what, with which and to whom.

  44. I’m afraid I don’t have a suitable haiku to add, but I do have some further comments on haiku, in case anyone is interested. Sorry for the lack of detailed references: I have a lot on my mind, at the moment, and I’m sleepy and therefore too lazy to look for them.

    Re syllable-count: according to what I have read the 5-7-5 syllable form that is usual in Japanese haiku derives from the natural rhythms and forms of the Japanese language, in which 5-7-5 form frequently appears unintentionally. This is related to the fact that Japanese is syllable-timed: each syllable takes about the same time. Not only is English stress-timed (i.e. the time between stressed syllables is about the same) but also variations in English pronunciation result in English speakers not always agreeing on the number of syllables in a word. E.g. for me “momentary” has three syllables (mo-men-tri) but many fellow Britons and probably the vast majority of Americans regard it as having four. Further, the content of a 17-syllable Japanese haiku seems, typically, to be expressible in 12-14 syllables of English. Consequently many who write English haiku regard the 5-7-5-rule as serving no useful artistic purpose. Interestingly, the top three award winning haiku in the Haiku Society of America’s 2012 annual contest have 9, 7 and 11 syllables. http://www.hsa-haiku.org/hendersonawards/henderson.htm It’s worth noting, in passing, that, despite their brevity, they are not written in stilted English. The furthest such haiku usually diverge from standard English is in the use of fragment/phrase form, where one of the two parts of the haiku is in the form of a “fragment” with a missing preposition – e.g. “Navajo moon” rather than “a/the Navajo moon”.

    Re kigo: although season-words, kigo, or indications of season predominate in English haiku, even Japanese haiku authorities have accepted that it’s reasonable to regard kigo as being optional in English haiku.

    The overall point is that it makes sense (in my opinion) to import the key concepts of haiku into English, but not necessarily the rules that evolved in the context of Japanese language and culture.

    For further reading I recommend .pdfs by Richard Gilbert, and his book Poems of Consciousness; and books by Makoto Ueda, especially Basho and His Interpreters. In the latter Ueda translates Japanese haiku into 5-7-5 English, but he also gives literal translations as well quotations from differing commentaries, which give practical insight into the nature of haiku.

  45. Huh. It almost seems those prizes were given for “best haiku that doesn’t look like a haiku to the layperson”. I like the honorable mentions better and they are closer to the form we’re used to.

    prize-winning haiku;
    i, engineer, philistine,
    like what i’m used to

  46. Interesting stuff, Jemery. Reading the winners to myself, it seems that a 2-3-2 stress pattern is very common, which in only a few cases happens to match the 5-7-5 syllable rule.

    “Navajo moon” being a good example case – 4 syllables but only 2 stress points (Na- and Moo-) whereas “A Navajo moon” gets the syllable count right but kills the flow.

  50. So my haiku is not even bad.
    May I question this thought, a tad?
    A Japanese rhyme
    Wastes everyone’s time
    For me it’s an affected fad.

    Word power freedom
    Creative in straitjacket
    Strangle it. Dead. Dead.

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