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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
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Zero to Hero, a Guide - 3. Poetry Prompt 2 – Haiku
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Poetry Prompt
Let's Write a Basho-style Haiku!
Without a doubt, Haiku is the best-known form of set verse now. More are written than all the other types combined. Most, if not all of us, were given a handout sheet in high school English class. This paper offered a few examples and set out the sparse parameters of the poems.
Through this process we wind up learning about the 100-year tradition of Haiku in the English language, but what we miss is a connection to the real thing. In other words, just because our poem has three lines in a syllable arrangement of 5-7-5 doesn’t mean it’s a Haiku. Likewise, a doggerel choppiness (or, what I think of as “haiku-speak”) has been associated with the form in English, and that’s a pity. So, let’s set our preconceived notions aside and look at the form from the Japanese perspective.
Haiku, or Hokku as it was originally known, arose out of Tanka and a variation on that form. The natural way in which the five lines of Tanka can be broken into strophes of three and two lines, in either combination, was known as Renga, or linked verses. These witty poems, which often took the form of question and answer, were light and popular entertainment.
That all changed with a Gay genius. Basho Mastsuo (1644-1694) spent his life sequestered with the men he loved, first with the teenager with whom he was raised almost as a brother within a samurai family, and then later as a lay Buddhist monk with several men who formed his acolytes and partners.
In the summer of 1684 (when he was forty years old), he set out with his partner Sora (who was thirty-six,) to see the country. These adventures resulted in the flowering of his poetry and the widespread dispersal of his brand of Haiku. Later, his most influential travel collection of verse was finalized the year he died as Oku no Hosomichi, or A Narrow Path through Open Country. Its posthumous publication in 1702 ensured his poetic immortality.
A Zen spirituality pervade his poetry – an above-it-all detachment – or, what I like to think of as an objective POV, because Buddhist thought teaches the “I” is an allusion. Basho used the very limited form to capture the corporal impressions of an event, and trusted that the reader would insert his or her own emotions into what they were shown. By corporal I mean the bodily senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. This is exactly the opposite of Tanka, where the poet must place him or herself in the scene they are writing about. With Haiku, there is no human presence, but only the scene itself. Like a Modern painting, the viewer is expected to interpret the work of art by bringing forth their own personal connection to it.
Basho’s most famous Haiku is this:
Furu ike ya
Kawazu tobikomu
Mizu no oto.
Which translates literally as:
That old pond,
A frog jumps
The water's sound.
There is a particular anthology of one hundred English-language versions of those eight simple Japanese words, and all of them are different, and all of them are in proper Haiku form.
Here are more examples from Oku no Hosomichi. When you read them, try to connect to their spiritual detachment, and note the total lack of “haiku-speak”. Your poems too should be grammatically sound, like Basho’s are in Japanese.
Cavorting sparrows
Amid yellow canola
Don’t see the flowers.
---
In complete silence,
A cicada's voice alone
Shakes the temple’s stones.
---
From his peony,
Full and loaded with nectar,
A shaggy bee walks.
---
Flowering butterfly
Atop the white poppy bloom,
Fold your lovely wings.
---
An oak amid plums
Acts unmoved in an orchard
Drowned by white petals.
---
When summer breezes
Waft through this sheltered highland,
Snow is in the scent.
---
A butterfly paused
On a tender orchid’s bow
Shimmers like incense.
The Haiku is based on a three-lined structure, and has the following syllables: 5,7,5. Like all Japanese poetry and traditional lyrics, a word illustrating the season is essential. In the frog poem, the frog is a symbol of summer and thus the seasonal word.
The Prompt: write six Haiku of two different kinds. One type inspired by sights you witness outdoors, say in a secluded patch of nature (either in your yard, a city park, or the great untamed wilderness). And a second type inspired by urban sights (something that catches your eye on the street), or that happens indoors. You must be true to the form and include a seasonal word within both poems, but remember, words like 'surfboard' and 'bug spray' speak of summer just as much as 'frog' and 'cicada' do. Think outside the box and just use a sight that speaks to the season in the part of the world you are right now.
To be a true Haiku, do not use words or concepts like "I," "my," "mine," etc. Stick to plain scene-painting, for if the sight moved you, it has the potential to move others too.
As a final inspiration, here’s my translation of the Furu Ike ya poem:
Up to a stale pond,
A grizzled frog gets set to
Jump the water's sound.
Self-Review: Now that you have written several Haiku, I ask you to perform a self-check against the following set of questions. If you answer ‘Yes’ to one or more of them, and this leads to feelings of dissatisfaction with your results, turn to the appendix List of Random Prompt Ideas and choose one to try the Basho Haiku challenge again. Check this list of questions with your second attempt and whittle those ‘Yes’s down to a comfortable level before going on to the Lyrics prompt challenge.
Ask yourself DID I:
- Fail to include elements of nature and the season?
- Fall short or go over on the syllable counts?
- Present a “me” or “I” POV? If so, eliminate it; get above your own point of view and just show the scene that inspired you.
- Revert to disjointed “haiku-speak”, or make lines just for the length and pay no attention to flow, grammar or logic?
- Make hard stops at the end of each line?
- Treat the poem as a bunch of stand-alone lines and not a stanza?
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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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