Haiku Examples and Resources

Ancient pond

Frog leaps:

Splash!

Basho (1644-1694)

What is Haiku?

Haiku are short poems that capture a scene of nature in a way that invokes a vivid response by the reader (Cassedy and Suetake, 1967). Verbal minimalism brings the reader closer to a scene, to a feeling; metaphors and analogies are distractions to avoid. Atwood (1977, p. 1) describes haiku as "the fusion of seeing and feeling. What makes haiku unique among art forms is that all elaboration of ideas and descriptions has been eliminated so that this seeing-feeling can be instantly and spontaneously experienced."

This poetic form germinated in Japan seven hundred years ago, blossomed in the seventeenth century, and today haiku writing and reading are an integral part of Japanese culture. Haiku spread to the U.S. in the post World War II era.

Novices frequently characterize English haiku as 17 syllable poems, composed of three lines; the first line containing five syllables, the second seven, and the third five. Unfortunately, a focus on only the syllable pattern obscures the beauty and power of describing nature with an economy of words. Furthermore, the English syllable is longer than the Japanese onji. The use of the 5-7-5 English syllable pattern may produce wordy haiku that diminishes the intensity effected through conciseness (Higginson, 1985). Consequently, some authors have abandoned all attempts to count syllables with the insistence that substance, not form, is most important. Presently only two criteria for haiku are consistently requiredÑthey should be about nature and they should be short.

Haiku Web Resources
A Haiku Homepage

Haiku for People

Quiz and Resources