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.' 

Found On My Shelf: Patti Smith's "Babel"

A good feeling, to clean out the bookshelves. Came across this paperback edition of Patti Smith's Babel. I had forgotten all about this book! So glad to have met it again.

Here's a poem from the book -- the last one:

zug island

i know
all
your secret dreams
i know where
you are
goodnight
sleep tight
sweet streams
sweet beams
god light
you from afar

                         ~ Patti Smith, Babel 1979

…"not even the rain…" e.e. cummings

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. 

Such a beautiful line!

Here is the complete poem:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

e.e. cummings

Misconceptions in writing haiku

Even in college, I was surprised (as well as frustrated by the arrogance of a published poetry professor) who insisted that haiku must be 17 syllables. Rigid adherence to the 5-7-5 rule!

This is such an entrenched belief, taught to students from elementary grades and beyond.

In Japanese, a haiku poem is usually divided into three groups/lines of syllables, the first and last with five syllables, the second with seven. However, be careful not to get stymied by strict adherence to the number of syllables and miss the essence of haiku. The 17 syllables is not an absolute rule. Most Japanese syllables are short, as in po-ta-to. English syllables can be long, and take up too much space in a haiku, so English haiku frequently have fewer than 17 syllables, sometimes as few as ten. (from: The History and Artistry of Haiku, Patricia Burleson)

Haiku is a moment in time, in the present.  An act of not thinking but being.  It is noticing. Seeing. It is elegance and brevity. Balance. It is all of you within that moment without the ego of you interfering. 

Haiku is not the creation of crunching an experience into a set of syllables for syllable's sake. 

Winter haiku

Big Duke

big hat
big man
five pointed star
Oklahoma way
Big Duke
dancer man
Stagecoach sheriff
Buffalo Bill
hat-sweat-band, snake oil man
selling on the bay
mayor's wife
train ride
meeting in the dark,
or maybe a hot afternoon
unannounced stops
carny barker, yep
one-liners
cow-puncher
Montana
Wyoming
rumored heritages
Indian mom; Cherokee, Lennape
unknown father
West Virginia
run-away
illegal soldier
out west
Hollywoodland
orange groves, empty lots
sold!
Tom Mix,
tricks with whips,
knives,
spinning women
spider tattoos
dog-fights
Erroll Flynn, John Ford
on set
drunken history, only murmured
affairs and age, ignored
repeated lore.

my memories, only five
Big Duke, white haired, so very long
cane by chair
annoyed, or a rough laugh
as i climbed up furniture
holding red and yellow,
purple 78s
to the sun through
tiny round windows,
squish green centered mints in
an aqua glass dish

death comes
five year olds hustled away
funerals, adults only
and gone.



regan lee
march 2014
eugene, oregon

family picture

like a tooth from an ancient play
the eldest takes guilt wrapped in newspaper
irons the yellowed pages 
before filing it absently in a rusted trunk 
and the key --
long lost by a gleeful prop boy.

wandering alone in a darkened theater
she fondles the green curtains heavy with dust
slipping on dirty masking tape stuck to the floor.

the eldest dimly remembers a line or two
and whispers it, hoarsely,
in the wings.

~ regan lee, 1988

Blue Lights

         Blue Lights

photo: regan lee

unexpected, blue lights appear
in this isolation, and through
the thin cracks in the rough wood,
glowing mists invite, even while repelling

a cold silence makes itself known, waiting
we hear its breathing

dreams, night walking, forgetfulness
only slivers of mists and light beams remain

jarring realities intrude, mundane violences, abrupt commands
we don’t understand, we don’t remember
but sense invisible connections anyhow

we believe there’ll be a reveal in the retelling, no matter
how fragmented

memory has a sentience all its own

~ regan lee 

  october 2010

Olive

long and lean, bony really,
Olive arranges herself languidly in the coarse brown chair.

her tied dyed dress made of sheer scarves reveals bare legs, furry armpits and all
 her hair is a dark-massed orchestra wildly out of tune.

she's demanding uppers and coffee and, getting up, heads down the hallway calling out
"Is this your bedroom?" and her best friend Samantha, so damn voluptuous 
in her pink quilted vest, leans over to me, she's whispering assurances:

"It's all right, her mother's an opera singer" but
I don't feel any better.


~ regan lee
 sometime in the 1980s

the black green sea

my mother voluptuous in summer dress,
thick ankle straps,
shoots a man, 
some man there, on the pier

night lights reflecting on black sea water
at eighteen dark, raven haired, 
a hibiscus behind her ear

"Listen, I must tell you
I like to lose control," 
and she falls into the ivy, 
falls into the black-green sea
salt corroding red petals red hibiscus red the red
of blood.

~  regan lee, 198?

For Jack

For Jack

I already wrote this, gypsy man,
jukeboxes dark, falling off trucks,
tales, spinning,
turquoise shirts glinting in the dark below
following the music, the dance, the fights, the
well behaved, now, on another coast, but just.

Lights out, gone, an eye lost, and a life
Good night, Jack, we ended up badly, booze does that, and fear,
but children and lovers remain, remembering love, passion, drive, of a sorts, creative
churnings around red vinyl tables.

Although, there was that one phone call, facilitated by a friend, across the country,
and tales of Hawaii, Dorthy Dandridge, songs and Catholics oh hell I don’t remember
but you laughed, as you did, and about that eye, we knew that one was coming.




regan lee
october 2010