SM2220 Generative Art & Literature
Linda Lai / April 24, 2006
HAIKU
What is Haiku? …
Haiku is only one among the many kinds of poetry in Japan.
Other forms, e.g. the traditional tanka, the “short poem” (a little shorter than two
haiku), traditional folk songs etc.
Haiku poems are nature poems
*Indication of the season is crucial in traditional haiku (historically written at
parties): on a seasonal topic [kidai], mention of a season [kigo], show the season,
or suggest the season (seasonal association)
*Modern Japanese haiku poets tend to abandon the kigo requirement (see below)
Haiku poems are visual poems. (Haiku writers in the West name their experiments
“concrete haiku.”
Characteristics
FORM
 Three lines? Five lines?
 “five-seven-five form”: variation – 5/7//5/7/7 and 5/7/5//7/7
 Poems are made by arranging the groups of sounds so that their grammatical
breaks all went the same way (compare this to Mathew’s Algorithm of the
OuLiPo’s), usually with the shorter phrase going first.
 Choka (“long poem”) A sense of cadence was created by ending with an
additional phrase of about seven sounds. They have from three to over one
hundred groups of about twelve sounds

Tanka (“short poem”): with only two units of nominally twelve sounds each,
plus the final phrase of about seven; Kokinshu tanka divide near the middle
of the second twelve sounds
William J. Higginson’s summary of traditional form of haiku (until 1900):
1. Two rhythmical units, one of about twelve onji and one of about five, the break
between them often marked with a special grammatical device called a kireji, or
cutting word.
2. Since the rhythmic break between the two rhythmical units is equally likely to
occur after the first five onji or after the first twelve, the normal rhythm of a
traditional haiku in Japanese is five, seven, and five onji.
3. The form of traditional haiku originated in the incomplete opening stanza of a
longer poem; the haiku form is therefore rhythmically incomplete.
4. often omit features of normal grammar, such as complete sentences and
complicated verb endings.
RHETORICAL PRINCIPLE
 Normally in the present or present perfect tense
AESTHETIC PRINCIPLES:
 To capture the mental images that we experience in our mind.
“Image” in haiku = words which name objects or actions that cause


sensations from which we form mental images, or the mental images
themselves; a language or mental equivalent for a physical sensation or a
set of sensations.
 to capture images in vivid, clear writings to give the reader clear images:
writings that enable the reader to picture what the writer’s words show, to hear
what they sound, and to feel what they touch…
Juxtaposition of images
Sources: Zen consciousness
Modern Japanese Haiku
Continuous explorations and shifts in form and subject matter
Shiki created his own school with his own disciples and confederates. He died in
1902.
Kawahigashi Hekigoto (1873-1937) was most prominent for his commitment to
renovate haiku.
-- keeping the traditional form + finding freshness in taste
e.g. two poems of his on fireworks (hanabi) presents fireworks that are heard only,
not seen
far fireworks
sounding, otherwise
not a thing
to hanabi
oto shite nani mo
nakarikeri
the dragonfly catching
pole, to the calling waves
abandoned and left
tonbo tsuru
sao yoru nami ni
suttee yukinu
Despite the limitation in form (length and subject matter), haiku endures.
Recordings of the writers’ impressions of life
Shared casually like a chance conversation over a cup of tea or coffee, OR –
Shared formally as a guest reading or lecture
Sometimes treated as an art object
Almost every newspaper has its haiku column.
They are haiku clubs.
*Modern Japanese haiku poets tend to abandon the seasonal word (kigo)
requirement: the season-word lists were artificial and often specific to one region
and not others; modern cityscapes have relatively few manifestations of nature and
life is spent in indoors most of the time
The Haiku Movement in English
Began around 1958 with the publication of three books in translation, plus two
critical/analytical works, Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Burns and Harold G.
Henderson’s An Introduction to Haiku. As a result, many writers’ clubs in the U.S.
and in London starting writing haikus.
1963 – the first of many magazines devoted to English-language haiku began
publishing
Higginson adapts the traditional form for Haiku in English:
(p. 105)
(p. 112) “Many Western haiku poets first learned of the haiku as a `poem in seventeen
syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, five’ and began writing in that form.”
New European Haiku
Began in the 1960s
Why are we interested in haiku for writing machine?
Reference:
William J. Higginson (with Penny Harter), The Haiku Handbook: How to Write,
Share, and Teach Haiku, Kodansha International, Tokyo, New York, London, 1985.
Basic rules of writing Haiku
1. Haiku takes place in present and moments of insights connected with nature
2. Format: short- long – short horizontal lines of 8-12 words
3. A moment of insight, surprise, awareness, delight, surprise (deemphasize your
ego)
4. Open your mind to experience and not let it be filled with your emotions and
imaginations
5. Avoid using figurative “poetic” expressions like metaphors, similes,
personifications
6. Avoid using dramatic sound values like rhymes, assonance, and dissonance
7. Haiku usually contain one or two images, which are usually separated by an
explicit break with punctuation mark (- /. / … /: /;), also emotional words like
AH! / OH! if necessary.
8. Haiku should have varying tones
9. Haiku is not merely description, but little drama; snapshot of an object or a
scene, there should be naturalness to what happens in Haiku. You are not
suggested to link the images with a kind of cause- and effect relationship.
10. Be pure and sincere, avoid sentimentality
11. Do not explain anything. Let it open to the experience of nature. How you
express the images will do this for you. Haiku will touch others.
12. Stillness and silence Haiku presented is important because it allows us to be
receptive and attentive to our experience and surroundings.
13. Haiku highlights a personally felt moment, and you express it for an important
reason.