I don't know if that haiku I wrote was very effective. Did it convey the picture of pigeons taking the subway?
They (the rock doves) have learned to wait at the stations in NYC for the trains, get on when the automatic doors open and ride to another station, get off and go to pigeon work. Those that study them learned that they do it in reverse in the evenings.
Of course, if you have to explain a haiku, it loses it's ku...
this was my reply. Sylables are wrong but it kind of worked for me. I read somewhere that 17 is for the Japanese language, 12 can work for english.
mine is 14, I think but
it is too early for addition.
Winter Sunshine
Me and my shadow sit here
shivering
Cecil once said Haiku is nothing. I finally figured out what he meant
I think I do.
ST...I guess I have been over that syllable thing enough, (see my haiku 101 post.)
I do not ever count syllables anymore nor do I always use the 'seasonal' word...that is Japanese style haiku. Haiku has been hai-jacked Jack by us Westerners and has become a completely different form. Paul Reps (my master and guru of haiku) was the first (or one of the first) to understand and bring haiku to the West.
Some of the 'ku' rules have not changed in the transition, for instance the essence of haiku, the A Hah! moment. I use analogy which is not in the rules, I sometimes place myself in the ku which is unruly, but all the great haijin broke all the rules...like you said once, you can break the rules if you KNOW what they are.
As for syllables...it is good form in the West to use no more than 17 in total but I don't subscribe to that either for sitting and counting syllables breaks the flow of the moment I am writing the ku. I see an aWful lot of bad haiku but the word hai means 'fun' so bad or good, writing haiku is all good. Most that write haiku know nothing of haiku or just what a high school English teacher taught 'em. They insist on the 5-7-5 format, the seasonal word, etc... And it seems they are conditioned by what they were taught and refuse to change to a more Western ideal or development. This is a hugely fought debate within the genre...and goes on still.
I am a haiku rebel, like my friend Paul...I like doing 5-7-5 as zazen, practice (and when I was learning haiku) but I have done one line haiku, short abrupt haiku and long-assed haiku. As long as it makes me happy it is satisfying. Hah! I like distilled haiku, just the barest to relate the essence, like a good whiff of haiku.
As for the lost February haiku...it is like writing haiku on water, it's okay...for everything in this universe is impermanent. (Was a good lesson for me too.)
took me along time to figure out what he meant by that, and I still may not know, for me it is a vanity, I was fishing for a compliment tthat is what it was
i could care less about the sylables too that was bullshit
writing haiku ego out the window it is nothing to crow about
I like that ku a lot, it said a lot for me, well it meant a lot, no it just was a haiku moment a moment in my being. as I existed in that moment when I wrote it, and I felt so proud of myself, and then I remembered what cecil said about haiku being nothing. just sittting in a feruary sunshine feeling cold. It is a moment in amber a book mark in my existence here
Seeds from a birch tree a nice book about haiku for seventeen dollars, I could have save my money, learned from you and judih,