A Very Brief Definition of Haiku
This is not definitive, to be sure, but it's my best understanding of this
venerable poetry form. -Ann
Haiku is a form of poetry that comes out of Japan. As it's practiced
in Japanese, it consists of 3 lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.
In English, people often compose haiku poems more loosely with less
syllables, because the Japanese language sometimes takes more syllables
to say something. On the Interactive Poetry Pages, however, the 5-7-5 structure
tends to hold, because of the dynamics of working so closely with others.
The images in haiku should be concrete, leaving profound
concepts unsaid, but perhaps somehow evident to the reader in a
non-verbal way. There's a Zen flavor to it. The reader should discover the
meanings in the poem for him- or herself.
Here is one of the definitive haiku pages on the web. There are links from
Shiki to many other fine Haiku resources:
- The Shiki Internet Haiku Salon