HAIKU

'' '' is a mode of Japanese poetry, the late 19th century revision by Masaoka Shiki of the older . Hokku once were the opening verses of a linked verse form, ''haikai no renga''. The traditional haiku consisted of a pattern of 5, 7, 5 on. The Japanese word ''on'', meaning "sound", corresponds to a ''mora'', a phonetic unit similar but not identical to the syllable of a language such as English. (The words ''onji'' ("sound symbol") or ''moji'' (character symbol) are also sometimes used.) A haiku contains a special ''season word'' (the ''kigo'') representative of the season in which the renga is set, or a reference to the natural world.
Haiku usually combines three different lines, with a distinct grammatical break, called kireji, usually placed at the end of either the first five or second seven morae. In Japanese, there are actual kireji words. In English, kireji is often replaced with commas, hyphens, elipses, or implied breaks in the haiku. These elements of the older haiku are considered by many to be essential to haiku as well, although they are not always included by modern writers of Japanese "free-form haiku" and of non-Japanese haiku. Japanese haiku are typically written as a single line, while English language haiku are traditionally separated into three lines.
In Japanese, nouns do not have different singular and plural forms, so 'haiku' is usually used as both a singular and plural noun in English as well.
Senryu is a similar poetry form that emphasizes humor and human foibles instead of seasons, and which may not have kigo or kireji.

Examples

Japanese hokku and haiku are traditionally printed in one vertical line, though in handwritten form they may be in any reasonable number of lines.

★ An example of classic hokku by Bashō:
:古池や蛙飛込む水の音　
:Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
:An old mere
:When the frogs jump in
:The sound of water

★ Another Bashō classic:
:初しぐれ猿も小蓑をほしげ也
:Hatsu shigure saru mo komino wo hoshige nari
:the first cold shower;
:even the monkey seems to want
:a little coat of straw.
[At that time, Japanese rain-gear consisted of a large, round hat and a shaggy straw cloak.]

Origin and evolution

From renga to haikai

The exact origin of hokku is still subject to debate, but it is generally agreed that it originated from classical linked verse form called ''renga'' (連歌). There are two types of renga:

★ The short renga, ''tanrenga'', has a 5–7–5 – 7–7 structure. The first 5–7–5 of a short renga is called ''chōku'' (the longer verse), to which answers the remaining 7–7, ''tanku'' (the shorter verse).

★ The long renga, ''chōrenga'', consists of an alternating succession of chōku and tanku, 36 to 100 verses per volume. The first verse of a long renga is a chōku (5–7–5) called ''hokku'' (発句, "the opening verse"), the second is a tanku (7–7) called ''waki'', … and the last is a tanku called ''ageku''.
In the 1400s a rising middle class led to the development of a less courtly linked verse called . The term ''haikai no renga'' first appears in the renga collection Tsukubashu. ''Haiku'' came into being when the opening verse of ''haikai no renga'' was made an independent poem at the end of the 19th century.
The inventors of ''haikai no renga'' (abbr. ''haikai'') are generally considered to be Yamazaki Sokan (1465–1553) and Arakida Moritake (1473–1549). Later exponents of ''haikai'' were Matsunaga Teitoku (1571–1653), the founder of the Teimon school, and Nishiyama Sōin (1605–1682), the founder of the Danrin school. The Teimon school's deliberate colloquialism made ''haikai'' popular, but also made it depend on wordplay. To counter this dependence, the Danrin school explored people's daily life for other sources of playfulness, but often ended up with frivolity.
In the 1600s, two masters arose who elevated ''haikai'' and gave it a new popularity. They were Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) and Onitsura (1661–1738). Hokku was only the first verse of ''haikai'', but its position as the opening verse made it the most important, setting the tone for the whole composition. Even though hokku sometimes appeared individually, they were understood to always be in the context of ''haikai'', if only theoretically. Bashō and Onitsura were thus writers of ''haikai'' of which hokku was only a part, though the most important part.

The time of Buson

Grave of Yosa Buson

The next famous style of haikai to arise was that of Yosa Buson (1716–1783) and others such as Gyōdai, Chora, Rankō, Ryōta, Shōha, Taigi, and Kitō, called the Tenmei style after the Tenmei Era (1781–1789) in which it was created. Buson was better known in his day as a painter than as a writer of ''haikai'', but today that is reversed. His affection for painting can be seen in the painterly style of his hokku, and in his attempt to deliberately arrange scenes in words. Hokku was not so much a serious matter for Buson as it was for Bashō. The popularity and frequency of haikai gatherings in this period led to greater numbers of verses springing from imagination rather than from actual experience.
No new popular style followed Buson. A very individualistic approach to ''haikai'' appeared, however, in the writer Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827) whose miserable childhood, poverty, sad life, and devotion to the Pure Land sect of Buddhism are clearly present in his hokku.

The appearance of Shiki

After Issa, ''haikai'' entered a period of decline in which it reverted to frivolity and uninspired mediocrity. The writers of this period in the 19th century are known by the deprecatory term ''tsukinami'', meaning "monthly", after the monthly or twice-monthly ''haikai'' gatherings of the end of the 18th century. But in regard to this period of ''haikai'', it came to mean "trite" and "hackneyed".
This was the situation until the appearance of Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), a reformer and revisionist who marks the end of hokku in a wider context. Shiki, a prolific writer even though chronically ill during a significant part of his life, not only disliked the ''tsukinami'' writers, but also criticized Bashō. Like the Japanese intellectual world in general at that time, Shiki was strongly impressed by Western culture. He favored the painterly style of Buson and particularly the European concept of ''plein-air'' painting, which he adapted to create a style of reformed hokku as a kind of nature sketch in words, an approach called ''shasei'', literally "sketching from life". He popularized his views by verse columns and essays in newspapers.
All hokku up to the time of Shiki were written in the context of ''haikai'', but Shiki completely separated his new style of verse from wider contexts. Being agnostic, he also separated it from the influence of Buddhism with which hokku had very often been tinged. And finally, he discarded the term "hokku" and called his revised verse form "haiku". Shiki thus became the first haiku poet. His revisionism brought an end to ''haikai'' and hokku as well as to surviving ''haikai'' schools.

Haiga

Haiga, the combination of haiku and art, is nearly as old as haiku itself. Haiga began as haiku added to paintings, but included in Japan the calligraphic painting of haiku via brushstrokes, with the calligraphy adding to the power of the haiku. Earlier haiku poets added haiku to their paintings, but Bashō is noted for creating haiga paintings as simple as the haiku itself. Yosa Buson, a master painter, brought a more artistic approach to haiga. Haiga poet-artists followed either of these approaches.
Today, artists have combined haiku with paintings, photographs and other art

Haiku in the West

Although there were attempts outside Japan to imitate the old hokku in the early 1900s, there was little genuine understanding of its principles. Early Western scholars such as Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) and William George Aston were mostly dismissive of hokku's poetic value. One of the first advocates of English-language hokku was the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi. In "A Proposal to American Poets," published in the ''Reader'' magazine in February 1904, Noguchi gave a brief outline of the hokku and some of his own English efforts, ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets!" At about the same time the poet Sadakichi Hartmann was publishing original English-language hokku, as well as other Japanese forms in both English and French.
In France, hokku was introduced by Paul-Louis Couchoud around 1906. Couchoud's articles were read by early Imagist theoretician F. S. Flint, who passed on Couchoud's(somewhat idiosyncratic) ideas to other members of the proto-Imagist Poets' Club such as Ezra Pound. Hokku subsequently had a considerable influence on Imagists in the 1910s, notably Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" of 1913, but, notwithstanding several efforts by Yone Noguchi to explain "the hokku spirit" there was as yet little understanding of the form and its history.
The first translation of a Haiku book to a western language, in this case, to Spanish, was realized by the Mexican poet and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz with the collaboration of Eikichi Hayashiya. In 1956 they published "Sendas de Oku", the famous book by Matsuo Basho, "Oku no Hosomichi". Octavio Paz wrote an essay about this translation work, and published it in the book "El signo y el garabato".

Blyth, Yasuda and Henderson

After early Imagist interest in haiku the genre drew less attention in English until after World War II, with the appearance of a number of influential volumes about Japanese haiku.
In 1949, with the publication in Japan of the first volume of ''Haiku'', the four-volume work by R. H. Blyth, haiku was introduced to the post-war world. Blyth was an Englishman who lived first in Japanese-annexed Korea, then in Japan. He produced a series of works on Zen, haiku, senryu, and on other forms of Japanese and Asian literature. Those most relevant here are his ''Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics'' (1942); his four-volume ''Haiku'' series (1949–52) dealing mostly with pre-modern hokku, though including Shiki; and his two-volume ''History of Haiku'' (1964). Today he is best known as a major interpreter of haiku to English speakers.
Present-day attitudes to Blyth's work vary. Many contemporary writers of haiku were introduced to the genre through his works. These include the San Francisco and Beat Generation writers, such as Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. Many members of the international "haiku community" also got their first views of haiku from Blyth's books, including James W. Hackett, Eric Amann, William J. Higginson, Anita Virgil, and Lee Gurga. In the late twentieth century, members of that community with direct knowledge of modern Japanese haiku often noted Blyth's distaste for haiku on more modern themes and his strong bias regarding a direct connection between haiku and Zen, a "connection" largely ignored by Japanese poets. (Bashō, in fact, felt that his devotion to haiku prevented him from realizing enlightenment^[1]) Blyth also did not view haiku by Japanese women favorably, downplaying their substantial contributions to the genre, especially during the Bashō era and the twentieth century.
Alhough Blyth did not foresee the appearance of original haiku in languages other than Japanese when he began writing on the topic, and although he founded no school of verse, his works stimulated the writing of haiku in English. At the end of the second volume of his ''History of Haiku'' (1964), he remarked that "The latest development in the history of haiku is one which nobody foresaw,— the writing of haiku outside Japan, not in the Japanese language". He followed that comment with several original verses in English by the American James W. Hackett (b. 1929), with whom Blyth corresponded.
In 1957, the Charles E. Tuttle Co., with offices in both Japan and the U.S., published ''The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English, with Selected Examples'' by the Japanese-American scholar and translator Kenneth Yasuda. The book consists mainly of material from Yasuda's doctoral dissertation at Tokyo University (1955), and includes both translations from Japanese and original poems of his own in English which had previously appeared in his book ''A Pepper-Pod: Classic Japanese Poems together with Original Haiku'' (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947). In ''The Japanese Haiku'', Yasuda presented some Japanese critical theory about haiku, especially featuring comments by early twentieth-century poets and critics. His translations conform to a 5–7–5 syllable count in English, with the first and third lines end-rhymed. Yasuda's theory includes the concept of a "haiku moment", which he said is based in personal experience and provides the motive for writing a haiku. While the rest of his theoretical writing on haiku is not widely discussed, his notion of the haiku moment has resonated with haiku writers in North America.
The impulse to write haiku in English in North America was probably given more of a push by two books that appeared in 1958 than by Blyth's books directly. His indirect influence was felt through the Beat writers; Jack Kerouac's ''The Dharma Bums'' appeared in 1958, with one of its main characters, Japhy Ryder (based on Gary Snyder), writing haiku.
Also in 1958, ''An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Bashô to Shiki'' by Harold G. Henderson, came from the American publisher Doubleday Anchor Books. This was a careful revision of Henderson's earlier book ''The Bamboo Broom'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1934), which apparently drew little notice as the world spiralled into militarist dictatorships before World War II. (After the war, Henderson and Blyth worked for the American Occupation in Japan and for the Imperial Household, respectively, and their mutual appreciation of haiku helped form a bond between the two, even as they collaborated on communications between their respective employers.^[2])
Henderson translated every hokku and haiku into a rhymed tercet (a-b-a), whereas the Japanese originals never used rhyme. Unlike Yasuda, however, he recognized that seventeen syllables in English are generally longer than the seventeen morae of a traditional Japanese haiku. Since the normal modes of English poetry depend on accentual metre rather than on syllabics, Henderson chose to emphasize the order of events and images in the originals, rather than counting syllables.
Henderson also welcomed correspondence, and when North Americans began publishing magazines devoted to haiku in English, he encouraged them. Not as dogmatic as Blyth, Henderson insisted only that haiku must be poems, and that the development of haiku in English would be determined by the poets.

The budding of American haiku

Precisely who qualifies as the first American haiku poet depends on one's definition of haiku. Individualistic "haiku-like" verses by the innovative Buddhist poet and artist Paul Reps (1895–1990) appeared in print as early as 1939 (''More Power to You--Poems Everyone Can Make'', Preview Publications, Montrose CA.). Other Westerners inspired by Blyth's translations attempted original haiku in English, though again generally failing to understand the principles behind the verse form, which in Blyth is predominantly the more challenging hokku rather than the later and more free-form haiku. The resulting verses, including those of the Beat period, were often little more than the brevity of the haiku form, combined with current ideas of poetic content, or uninformed attempts at "Zen" poetry; however, some by Kerouac, in particular, remain striking examples of the genre and adumbrate the concision of contemporary practice.
:Snow in my shoe
:Abandoned
:Sparrow's nest
:--Jack Kerouac (collected in ''Book of Haikus'', Penguin Books, 2003)
One of the first significant bodies of haiku written in English was by the African-American novelist Richard Wright, who in his final years composed some 4,000 haiku, 817 of which are collected in the volume ''Haiku: This Other World''. Wright hewed to a 5-7-5 syllabic structure and frequently employed surreal imagery and implicit political themes. Poets Gerald Vizenor, Gordon Henry, Jr., and Kimberley Blaeser have connected the haiku form to the tradition of the Native American/First Nations Peoples of the Anishinaabe tribe, stressing, as Wright often did also, the essential interconnectedness of humans and the natural world.
:Whitecaps on the bay:
:A broken signboard banging
:In the April wind.
:--Richard Wright (collected in ''Haiku: This Other World'', Arcade Publishing, 1998)
The experimental work of Beat and minority haiku poets expanded the popularity of haiku in English. Despite claims that haiku has not had much of an impact on the literary scene, a number of "mainstream" poets, such as Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, Etheridge Knight, William Stafford, W. S. Merwin, John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Seamus Heaney, Wendy Cope, Sonia Sanchez, Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, and others have tried their hand at haiku. Often, though, they have approached it in a relatively uninformed manner, more as a fixed form than as the complex, nuanced genre it is. Haiku has also proven very popular as a way of introducing students to poetry in elementary schools and as a hobby for numerous amateur writers who continue the innovation and experimentation that is the legacy of Shiki's reforms.
Nonetheless, the literary achievement of leading English-language haiku writers should not be underestimated. The North American "haiku movement" really begins in 1963 with the founding of the seminal journal ''American Haiku'' in Platteville, Wisconsin. Among contributors to the first issue were significant pioneering haiku poets J. W. Hackett, O Mabson Southard (1911-2000), and Nick Virgilio (1928-1989). Whereas Hackett represented an experiential/existential/Zen approach to haiku, Virgilio exemplified a more aesthetic conception that incorporated "found" and imaginary elements. In the second issue of ''American Haiku'' Virgilio published his celebrated "lily" and "bass" haiku, which became models of brevity, breaking down the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic form, approximating the actual duration of Japanese haiku, and pointing toward the leaner conception of haiku that would take hold in subsequent decades.
:lily:
:out of the water
:out of itself
:--Nick Virgilio (''Selected Haiku'', Burnt Lake Press/Black Moss Press, 1988)
:bass
:picking bugs
:off the moon
:--Nick Virgilio (''Selected Haiku'', Burnt Lake Press/Black Moss Press, 1988)
''American Haiku'' ended publication in 1968 and was succeeded by ''Modern Haiku'' in 1969, which remains a premiere haiku journal. Other early English-language haiku journals included ''Haiku Highlights'' (founded 1965; later known as ''Dragonfly''), Eric Amann's ''Haiku'' (founded 1967), and ''Haiku West'' (founded 1967).
The Haiku Society of America was founded in 1968 to promote haiku and began publishing its journal ''Frogpond'' in 1978, which remains a crucial and prestigious haikai publication. In 1991, the biennial Haiku North America conference was first held in California, and it continues to be the primary meeting ground for leading haiku poets, scholars, and translators on the continent. Some key issues that American haiku practitioners continue to ponder and debate include: appropriate length and structure of haiku, the use and importance of kigo (including in regions with little seasonal variation), the relation of haiku to Zen, the use of natural and urban imagery, the distinction between haiku and the related senryu genre, haiku grammar, and the incorporation of subjective elements, including personal pronouns. Particularly important resources for poets and scholars attempting to understand English-language haiku aesthetics and history are William J. Higginson's ''Haiku Handbook'' (McGraw-Hill, 1985) and Lee Gurga's ''Haiku: A Poet's Guide'' (Modern Haiku Press, 2003).
Although the English-language "haiku movement" is a collective enterprise with many significant contributors, one can single out particularly outstanding individual achievements by poets such as Hackett, Virgilio, Charles B. Dickson (1915-1991), Elizabeth Searle Lamb (1917-2005), Raymond Roseliep (1917-1983), Robert Spiess (1921-2002), and John Wills (1921-1993). Dickson, Spiess, and Wills are all exemplars of a nature-oriented approach to haiku, while Roseliep (a Catholic priest) adopted an adventurous metaphysical style that makes him the John Donne or George Herbert of American haiku.
:an aging willow--
:its image unsteady
:in the flowing stream
:--Robert Spiess (''Red Moon Anthology'', Red Moon Press, 1996)
:downpour:
:my "I-Thou"
:T-shirt
:--Raymond Roseliep (''Rabbit in the Moon'', Alembic Press, 1983)
Particularly noteworthy figures still active in the haiku community include: Peggy Willis Lyles (b. 1939), Marlene Mountain (b. 1939), George Swede (b. 1940), vincent tripi (b. 1941), Alexis Rotella (b. 1947), Christopher Herold (b. 1948), John Stevenson (b. 1948), Lee Gurga (b. 1949), Gary Hotham (b. 1950), Alan Pizzarelli (b. 1950), Jim Kacian (b. 1953), and Michael Dylan Welch (b. 1962). Their work exemplifies many important trends. For instance, Swede, Rotella, Pizzarelli, and Stevenson often blur the line between haiku and senryu, while both Mountain and Kacian are advocates of one-line haiku, which imitate the vertical, single-column form of printed Japanese haiku.
:Just friends:
:he watches my gauze dress
:blowing on the line.
:--Alexis Rotella (''After an Affair'', Merging Media, 1984)
:one fly everywhere the heat
:--Marlene Mountain (''Cicada'' 2.1, 1978)
Another pioneering haiku poet, Cor van den Heuvel (b. 1931), has edited the standard ''Haiku Anthology'' (1st ed., 1974; 2nd ed., 1986; 3rd ed. 1999). The third edition, published by W. W. Norton, although no longer up-to-date, remains the best introduction to the achievement of English-language haiku poetry up to 1999.
Since its publication, another generation of haiku poets has come to prominence in the new millennium and the era of the Internet. Among the most widely published and honored of these poets are Fay Aoyagi, Connie Donleycott, Carolyn Hall, Scott Metz, Christopher Patchel, Chad Lee Robinson, and Billie Wilson. But the total number of significant poets seems to be increasing, and a host of other names could be adduced.
The work of these poets belongs to the small press movement and figures prominently in long-established publications such as ''Modern Haiku'' and ''Frogpond''. Other important contemporary haiku journals include ''Mayfly'' (founded by Randy and Shirley Brooks in 1986), ''Acorn'' (founded by A. C. Missias in 1998), and ''The Heron's Nest'' (founded by Christopher Herold in 1999, an Internet-based publication with a print annual). There are also the Australian journal ''paper wasp'' and newer North American publications such as ''Wisteria'', ''moonset'', ''White Lotus'', and the Internet-based ''Roadrunner'' and ''Simply Haiku''. Many haiku journals have come and gone over the last five decades; the staying power of ''Modern Haiku'' (currently edited by Charles Trumbull) and ''Frogpond'' (currently edited by John Stevenson) is the exception rather than the rule--but it testifies to the continuity and continued vibrancy of English-language haiku.
Among significant contemporary publishers of haiku books are Jim Kacian's Red Moon Press, Randy Brooks's Brooks Books, and John Barlow's Snapshot Press in the U.K. All have produced high-quality anthologies and single-author collections.
:mourning dove
:answers mourning dove--
:coolness after the rain
:--Wally Swist (''The Silence Between Us'', Brooks Books, 2005)
:so suddenly winter
:baby teeth at the bottom
:of the button jar
:--Carolyn Hall (''Water Lines'', Snapshot Press, 2006)
Today, haiku is written in many languages, but most poets are still concentrated primarily in Japan and secondarily in English-speaking countries, including Australia. Haiku has already had a significant influence on western poetics via the work of the Imagists and the Beats; but the extent to which the "haiku movement" will become integrated into existing literary canons remains to be seen.

Contemporary English-language haiku

While traditional hokku/haiku focused on nature and the place of humans in nature, modern haiku poets often consider any subject matter suitable, whether related to nature, an urban setting, or even a technological context. While old hokku avoided some topics such as romance, sex, and overt violence, contemporary haiku often deal specifically with such themes.
Traditional hokku/haiku required a long period of learning and maturing, but contemporary haiku is often (and mistakenly) regarded as an "instant" form of brief verse that can be written by anyone, from schoolchildren to professionals. Many writers of modern haiku stay faithful to the standards of old hokku, however some other contemporary haiku poets have dropped such standards, emphasizing personal freedom and pursuing ongoing exploration in both form and subject matter.
Due to the various views and practices today, it is impossible to single out any current style or format or subject matter as definitive "haiku". Nonetheless, some of the more common practices in English are:

★ Use of three (or fewer) lines of no more than 17 total syllables;

★ Use of a season word (kigo);

★ Use of a cut or caesura (sometimes indicated by a punctuation mark) to contrast and compare, implicitly, two events, images, or situations.
This gradual loosening of traditional standards, encouraged by such poet-critics as Bob Grumman,^[3] has resulted in the word "haiku" being applied to brief, mathematical "poems," ("mathemaku") and to visual
poetry by Scott Helms. This attempt at stretching definitions of haiku can be considered excessive, but Grumman
attempts to defend his position by pointing to a similar blurring of definitional
boundaries in Japan.
In the early 21st century, there is a thriving community of haiku poets worldwide, mainly communicating through national societies and journals in in Japan, English-speaking countries, in Northern Europe (mainly Sweden, Germany, France, and The Netherlands), in the Balkans (mainly Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania), and in Russia.

Modern media

Internet

Both haiku writers and verses, as well as huge volumes of pseudo-haiku (also known as zappai), can be found online. A search will lead to many forums where both new and experienced poets learn, share, discuss, and freely criticize.
In the early days of the Internet, much of the development of haiku online stemmed from the ''Shiki Internet Haiku Salon''. This site began as an email list for haiku poets in 1994, which continues to operate in 2006. This development enabled haiku poets from across the world to communicate more easily, an important development for those haiku poets (or haijin) who are geographically isolated from like-minded poets.
In 1995, the scifaiku (science fiction haiku) form was invented by Tom Brinck.
In early 1998, Salon.com published the results of a haiku contest on the topic of computer error messages. The winning verses (senryu to be precise) were:
:Three things are certain:
:Death, taxes, and lost data.
:Guess which has occurred.
:::: — That one guy David Dixon
:Everything is gone;
:Your life's work has been destroyed.
:Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?
:::: — David Carlson
There are online computerized systems for generating random haiku-like verse; there are "Spamku" (verses about SPAM--a brand of tinned meat), as well as many other "clever" variations on the brevity of the haiku form.

Random Haiku on the Internet

Displaying a random haiku on a website, fan site, or profile page has become a popular Internet fad among members of Myspace, Facebook, and the blogosphere. Random haiku generally come in two kinds: they are either randomly chosen poems from a collection of pre-versed poetry, or they are algorithmically generated. The best algorithmic random haiku generators use advanced techniques employing Markov chains and sophisticated grammar engines to produce near-genuine haiku. Yet because they are created algorithmically according to grammar and statistical rules, they are usually meaningless and often humorous. Randomhaiku.com provides bloggers and other netizens with all the tools they need to put a random haiku on any page, and has also spawned a popular Facebook Application.

Television

Witty haiku-like (or rather senryu-like) poems, often satirizing the form itself, have appeared in popular TV programs such as ''Beavis and Butt-Head'', ''South Park'', ''Charmed'', and ''That 70's Show''.
Butt-Head:
:That was cool huh huh
:When we killed that frog huh huh
:It won't croak again
Hyde:
:My heart aches with pain
:When I see you I vomit
:Die away from me

Novels

Neal Stephenson's novel ''Cryptonomicon'' opens with a haiku narrated by Bobby Shaftoe, one of the main characters:
:Two tires fly. Two wail.
:A bamboo grove, all chopped down.
:From it, warring songs.
Throughout the course of the novel, Bobby Shaftoe writes many haiku describing his experiences in World War II.
In Chuck Palahniuk's novel ''Fight Club'' the unnamed protagonist utilizes haiku poems to illustrate his beliefs on modern consumerism and his own ''zen-ness'' which he disseminates to his co-workers through the use of inter office e-mails.
:Worker bees can leave.
:Even drones can fly away.
:The queen is their slave.
In Stephen King's ''It'', Ben Hanscomb writes the following to Beverly Marsh;
:Your hair is winter fire
:January embers
:My heart burns there, too

Video games

The character Bowser in the game '', for the Super Nintendo, had his own Haiku.
:Like the moon over
:the day, my genius and brawn
:are lost on these fools. ~haiku (Bowser)
In addition, the characters in one level of '', for PlayStation, speak exclusively in freestyle haiku.
Slayer from ''Guilty Gear'' says that he enjoys haikus; even in his Instant Kill he'll say a haiku.
In "Destroy All Humans 2" there are ninjas in the game who speak in Haiku. When questioned "Why are there ninjas in the game?" most characters usually answer "Everyone loves ninjas!"
On the internet game Kingdom of Loathing it is very common for haiku to be used. There is also a Haiku dungeon and a Haiku chat.

Music

The lyrics of the 1945 hit song Moonlight in Vermont consist of haiku in the A sections.
The American band Tally Hall wrote a song about writing a haiku.[1] The whole song is sung in "haiku" with pauses in between them.
The Dead, The Grateful Dead, the song "Ripple" on American Beauty :
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

Famous writers

Pre-Shiki period (hokku)

★ Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694)

★ Onitsura (1661–1738)

★ Yosa Buson (1716–1783)

★ Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827)

Shiki and later (haiku)

★ Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902)

★ Kawahigashi Hekigotō (1873–1937)

★ Takahama Kyoshi (1874–1959)

★ Taneda Santoka (1882–1940)

★ Iida Dakotsu (1885–1962)

★ Nakamura Kusatao (1901–1983)

Non-Japanese poets

Although all of the poets below have some haiku in print, only Hackett and Virgilio--and perhaps Roseliep and Swede--are known primarily for haiku. Amiri Baraka recently authored a collection of what he calls "low coup," his own variant of the haiku form. Poet Sonia Sanchez is also known for her unconventional blending of haiku and the blues musical genre.

★ W. H. Auden ★ Amiri Baraka ★ Jorge Luis Borges ★ Billy Collins ★ Cid Corman ★ Allen Ginsberg ★ James W. Hackett	★ Dag Hammarskjöld ★ Jack Kerouac ★ Lenard D. Moore ★ Paul Muldoon ★ Octavio Paz ★ Raymond Roseliep ★ Kenneth Rexroth/ Conrad Hilley	★ Sonia Sanchez ★ Gary Snyder ★ George Swede ★ José Juan Tablada ★ Nick Virgilio ★ Gerald Vizenor ★ Richard Wright

:Coming from the woods,
:A bull has a lilac sprig
:Dangling from a horn.
:--Richard Wright

Notes

1. As documented in Makoto Ueda's ''Literary and Art Theories in Japan'' (Press of Western Reserve U., 1967).
2. Some of which is documented in ''A Haiku Path: The Haiku Society of America 1968–1988'', published by the Society in 1994.
3. Modern Haiku (“A Divergery of Haiku, ToxanAtomyzd,”) 34:2, 2003, 20–26

References

★ Blyth, R. H. ''A History of Haiku.'' Vol. 1, ''From the Beginnings up to Issa.'' Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1963. ISBN 0-89346-066-4

External links

Haiku

★ Haiku for You : Collaborative internet art project for creating haiku images

★ RamenHaiku : Haiku Website with a Ramen Noodle theme

★ "Aha! poetry": Website with essays on and examples of haiku and related forms

★ "Daily Haiku by Wisteria Press": Website offering a free daily haiku via email

★ Haiku Society of America

★ Wonder Haiku Worlds: A community portal for haiku and related forms

★ Millikin University Haiku, a web site of undergraduate research on contemporary haiku

★ In the moonlight a worm…: Ideas for teaching haiku writing that go beyond the syllable rule

★ A web site containing definitions and examples of haiku, haibun, and haiga

★ Haiku for People – Haiku definitions and samples, online since 1995

★ Shiki Haikusphere and NOBO list

★ 'Spanish Haikus'

★ "Young Leaves": Website of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society showing the use of Japanese traditions in English-language haiku

★ "Versions": International community of haiku and tanka translators

★ Haiku Society

★ Haiku poems at Irreferencias (spanish)

★ Random Haiku – random haikus with an API for your blog, myspace, facebook profile

★ 'Haiku II': The original poem by the actual author and the origins of its well-used name "Haiku II."

Hokku

★ Page on Yone Noguchi and hokku at Ehime University

★ David Coomler's blog with essays and information on hokku

Haiku journals

★ World Haiku Review

★ Modern Haiku magazine

★ The Heron's Nest – A well-regarded online journal of contemporary English-language haiku

★ Simply Haiku: – An online literary journal showcasing Japanese short form poetry

★ tinywords – An online English-language haiku journal, founded in 2000, that publishes one haiku per day

★ Roadrunner Haiku Journal – An international online English-language haiku journal, founded in 2004, which also includes gendai haiku translations and The Scorpion Prize.

★ Frogpond – Frogpond, the Journal of the Haiku Society of America

★ bottle rockets bottle rockets, a magazine dedicated to haiku, senryu, and related poetry

iPhone

★ iPhoneHaikus.com

Moku

★ Moku Read another example of 'Moku' by Ana Elsner, originator of this form

Pseudo-haiku

★ The Pseudo-haiku page at the Open Directory Project

★ Spam Haiku archives at MIT, a very large archive of spam-related Haiku.

★ Salon Magazine's Haiku Error Messages – the winners of the contest that was the original source for the haiku error messages that can be found all over the internet

★
★ The case of the hijacked haiku – Salon magazine's discussion of the distribution of winners of their haiku error messages contest, usually without the attributions to the original authors

★ A Call for the Complete Elimination of Joke Haiku Production on the Internet – by Paul Henry (archived)

★ DeCSS haiku – The code for DeCSS in haiku – by Seth Schoen

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