NaHaWriMo: Stop with the 5-7-5 Haiku!

“The term syllable is an inaccurate way of describing the actual metrical units of Japanese poetry.”

        —Haruo Shirane, in his introduction to Kōji Kawamoto’s The Poetics of Japanese Verse (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2000)

“I don’t think counting 5,7,5 syllables is necessary or desirable. To reflect the natural world, and the season, is to reflect what is.” 

        —Gary Snyder

Indeed, the point of the “no 5-7-5” NaHaiWriMo logo is to emphasize that it’s a widespread misunderstanding to think of haiku merely as anything written in 5-7-5 syllables. Remember, 5-7-5 does not a haiku make. (NaHaiWriMo.com)

Oh I love this article! As I love the website. NaHaiWriMo --- haiku that does not follow the entrenched idea among westerners that haiku must be 5-7-5. Three lines that must have 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third.

I am an educator. I cringe and freak every time a well meaning teacher teaches their class about haiku. Students happily write haiku, following the mandate they're taught from the beginning: haiku has to have three lines of 5-7-5.

It's frustrating to have students, excited by the idea of haiku, become stuck in the 'right way' to create a haiku. After all, their teachers taught them that. Trying to gently teach them otherwise -- students and adults -- is difficult. That's when I pull rank; I'm a published haiku poet, etc. Still, I get suspicious looks, as if I'm not really correct and am somehow misinformed about all this.

The NaHaiWriMo site has an excellent article on why 5-7-5 is not the goal of writing haiku. It is not the 'rule.' 

Meat Counter

Here’s another one for the Professor:
Found myself at the meat counter. Dusty, dim, green-yellow puke linoleum, 
empty shelves.
I asked the woman standing next to me -- she was heavily sunglassed and wore a terry-cloth turban -- if they had any Operatic Peacock Parfait with Blueberry sauce.

Always the optimist.

regan lee

reworked june 2017

Seminar

Seminar

So the Professor assigns a dream poem.
 “Exactly as it happened” he instructs. 
An exercise in the surreal even while maintaining academic constructs within a decontructionist model of ironic post-modernistic symbolism within personal narratives.

I read my dream. Exactly as it happened. 
The dream had the following: floating zebras, talking mallards, velvet capes, a white-haired woman, nude beneath the moon, and oh,
the giraffe.

I was chided. Told my dream was “too much.” I said:
“Well, I was just folliowing directions. I reported back, truthfully. Tried to be accurate.” 
I was asked, “Well, what does it mean? What were you trying to say?”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought we were to just write down a dream we had. And I did. See?” --
   ...  floating zebras, talking mallards, velvet capes, white haired women (nude, beneath moon) and, the giraffe. I don’t know what it means.”

“Well,” said the Professor. “While it’s true exploring the archetypes and motifs within the conceit of the dream landscape wasn’t a part of the assignment, ... still ... it’s ...
too much.”

“Try again.”

regan lee

june 2017