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Poetry has been famously defined as "the best words in the best order" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge). Haiku, with so few words and such seeming limitations to order, would be utterly lost without some sense of following this dictum, and at its very best it undeniably does. Why, then, do some people, and most notoriously, some poets, deny that haiku is poetry?

And, if it's not poetry, what is it?

What do you think?

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I'm curious as to how someone could say that haiku isn't poetry.  Why would it be deemed otherwise?

Hi Laura: Haiku has been used—and seen—in a variety of ways in every culture in which it has gained traction. Certainly one way in which it has been promoted has been as a "way" or a kind of ritual approach to, say, satori, or as a meditative practice. It's perhaps obvious to say that when one's writing attempts to serve two masters—poetry and religion, in this case—it's extremely rare when both masters receive equal shrift. Other denigraters of haiku as poetry—mainstream poets, for instance—have argued that haiku is more reportage than creative act (the distinction at one time made between fiction writing and journalism), and too easy to write (obviously they haven't tried it from within a working knowledge of the tradition and craft). And there are other arguments to be made. I will be interested to hear what our readers think about this. Thanks for joining in the discussion.  —JK

Well, I would say that haiku is not conventionally "poetic," in that it is not really metrical, lyrical, figurative, nor conform to any of the traditional poetic conventions.

I wonder why we care if it is called poetry? Does that somehow indicate that it merits less respect? I think haiku is in a class of its own.  It is a meditative art.  A nugget of observation.  An experience edited to its essence.  To use a common expression, "It is what it is."

That's my two-cents worth, anyway  ;)

Can the question be answered by simply pointing to "real poets" -- poets published by literary publishers and discussed in literary journals -- sometimes use haiku forms?
I doubt that pointing solution would satisfy many. I think the question should be: why do we ask this question since there's plenty of evidence that haiku is poetry?
Is the question just sour grapes? As for sour grapes, I have personal experience with publishing works of haiku poetry that illustrate the power of haiku as a literary form and these works have gotten short shrift in the haiku critical media. At Single Island Press, we just published Cor van den Heuvel's A Boy's Seasons: haibun memoirs, a work that should put this question to rest, but so far the criticism has been dismissive and wholly inadequate. I do not doubt the sincerity of the dismissers; what I doubt is their ability to get outside the box and notice a work of haiku that actually moves things forward. Cor's book shows indisputably that haibun is adequate to the job of memoir, one of the most popular literary forms published today. Hello? The question posed in this forum -- long live the fora! -- should make us take a hard look at life in haiku nation.

I think this is one of those subjective questions/answers.  I approach haiku in the way I approach short story writing.  It's very very difficult since my goal is to have a work that cannot be added to, or detracted from without taking away from it.  Parity of expression that nevertheless expresses the whole perfectly.  But I don't think that a short story could not be called a story simply because it's a more concise work and I don't think that haiku should be labeled as non-poetry either simply because it doesn't have all the characteristics that have traditionally been associated with poetry.  My 2c too.  

Unfortunately, it is part of the human to condition to categorize all things. Often this is more than unhelpful. The 'I'm in the club and you're not' mentality makes the world smaller and destroys the art in art. No artist (of any stripe) should wish there to be definition of what is or isn't art. Haiku, like other poetic forms and art in general, is the way of touching the universal, the ineffable, the unknowable. We all can only dance around it and warm our hands by it. The creative comes through us and has no borders or boundaries. Nor does it have an end. It is known when  it is seen.
That said, I do understand the need for haiku to be recognized as part of the club and take its rightful place as part of the poetic whole. What else could it be called but poetry? I heartily agree in Jim's comment "(obviously they haven't tried it from within a working knowledge of the tradition and craft )". As we all know too well, haiku can be the damnedest thing.
As far as poetry being, "the best words in the best order" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), what is haiku if it isn't that? Granted it is a DIFFERENT form with different requirements, but fits that definition perfectly.

i used to study Gaelic poetry which had a very strict metrical format (Dain Direach) in the old days
I am sure the old bards who had to compose at night with a stone on their belly would say that free verse was not poetry.

If poetry is indeed "the best words in the best order" then haiku is poetry, though just not a familiar form to most westerners who still think it is about counting. Haiku could be described as "the least words in the best order" -- multum in parvo

i have read many ku which have many of the traditional devices used in "normal" poetry. I am reminded of Buson's:

bleak winter field
see how nobley the priest
deposits his stool

ok i prolly misquote from memory but the point is there is irony here and a great metaphor that the priest craps too and is therefore just like the rest of humanity. I agree Jim, about two masters, which Christ famously stated when he spoke about serving God and mammon. Poetry and haiku in particular is a distillation of thought and imagery conveyed in a concise manner.

Haiku goes far beyond mere reportage or comments on the weather and resonate with a deeper meaning which all good poetry does. All poetry is synergy and i believe haiku to be more so

slainte

col

good to be here :)

When an image, a feeling or an emotion can be captured in so few words as those contained in a haiku, it is definitely poetry.

I would rather turn the question around and ask whether poetry isn't big enough to include haiku. 

The real issue, however, is "who is asking the question?"  I think people writing haiku need not be concerned about whether haiku is poetry: haiku is real enough to us without being grouped together with poetry or anything else.  To the uninitiated, to debate whether or not haiku is poetry, probably doesn't mean anything and doesn't convey enough information to yield any insight -- my dog can't tell the difference between poetry, haiku, and barking. And people who know poetry intimately would never need to ask the question.

When my students ask me "What's the difference between prose and poetry?" I suppose it's a cop-out, but I tell them, "Look at how it's arranged on the page." If the words are broken into packages and not running from margin to margin, it's a poem, I say. (I avoid the topic of "prose-poems"!) My students usually don't question this answer, but they could easily challenge this definition by visually turning any random bit of prose into "poetry":

In a village of La Mancha,
the name of which
I have no desire
to call to mind,
there lived not long since
one of those gentlemen
that keep a lance
in the lance-rack,
an old buckler,
a lean hack,
and a greyhound for coursing.

Have I justy now made Cervantes' opening for Don Quixote into a poem? Maybe! When you read it, do you find yourself lingering on the words and perhaps savoring their music a bit more than you might when you see them printed on the page as prose? I do! I think that the reader's poetic frame of mind is essential to perceiving words as poetry. I always bring that frame of mind to my reading of haiku.

I have never heard the opinion that haiku was not considered to be poetry.  I think haiku, senryu, tanka, the Korean sijo, are all forms of poetry.  They have a tradition and rules just like cinquains, limericks, sonnets, villanelles and other forms of poetry.

I think a better question is:  "Is haiku JUST poetry?".  The word itself, poetry, in some unique way, actually limits the boundaries of haiku, if any.

From an enjoyable group game, to meditation, zen practice to poetic device, haiku exists as one of the most complete poetic and evocative structures of them all.  While the argument of whether haiku is poetry is irrelevant in some way, it remains an important stimulus because over the many years to come, it is going to be grabbing more and more shelf space at the book stores:  it's going to be nudging other poetry genres a bit to the side at Universities around the globe.  It's going to indelibly define itself, not by structure but by essence through forums like this, through internet publications and so on.

To me, poetry has always been a "voice".  Whether it is a sonnet voice, haiku voice, or a freestyle (freeform) voice, it's a voice.  And when we use that voice, regardless of the limitations of format, it is poetry. 

Thanks for all your hard work, Jim, in presenting such a fine site and now, this forum.

Don Baird

Hello,

Despite being one who is not a fan of labels and categorizing, I still end up having the discussion in each of my high school poetry classes about what separates poetry from prose.  We usually end up talking about three things:

the line, not the sentence or paragraph, as the unit of composition

heightened use of/attention to sound -- the musicality of poetry

density

If that doesn't describe haiku as well as mainstream poetry, I don't know what does.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that haiku is used extensively in elementary school as a way of teaching syllables.  Because haiku is short, and because it's been taught to generations of children by teachers whose entire knowledge of the form is "nature and 5-7-5", many people -- including mainstream poetry editors -- have no idea that haiku is a rich and complex form of poetry.  Haiku is seen as cutesy verse, and a book search at Amazon reveals that there is no shortage of published work supporting that notion, including "Pirate Haiku:  Bilge-Sucking Poems of Booty, Grog, and Wenches for Scurvy Sea Dogs", "Redneck Haiku: Double Wide Edition", "Dog-ku: Very Clever Haikus Cleverly Written by Very Clever Dogs", "Robot Haiku: Poems for Humans to Read Until Their Robots Decide It's Kill Time" -- well, you get the picture.

I wonder what would happen if every haiku poet contacted five mainstream poetry journals and made the case for the inclusion of haiku.  Maybe there hasn't been enough of a push by enough poets yet?  I don't know.

Mr. Kacian, thank you for establishing this forum.  What a great resource.

cat

P.S., Hey, Don, you and I were typing at the same time, but you finished first -- I agree with what you say and I hope you're right that haiku is going to be "nudging other poetry genres a bit to the side".

In general most Westerners don't 'get' haiku.  If we received any instruction in school it was minimal, maybe just a few assignments in grade school, and all we remember is "5-7-5".  We don't 'get' kigo at all, we think they're only about nature not about seasons so when we read it we think it's just some meaningless or paradoxical  Zen koan'esque riddle.  We buy novelty refrigerator magnets and randomly mix them on the fridge door to 'compose' haiku and think haiku from random online word/phrase generators are real... 

http://www.generatorland.com/glgenerator.aspx?id=113 (http://www.generatorland.com/glgenerator.aspx?id=113)

http://byakkohaiku.tripod.com/ihkg.htm (http://byakkohaiku.tripod.com/ihkg.htm)

http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/haiku/haikumachine.htm (http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/haiku/haikumachine.htm) 

Japanese style haiku just doesn't translate well into western sensibilities.  We don't hear 5-7-5 syllabic meter and we don't share the same level of cultural references to the seasons as do the Japanese.  Western haiku kigo needs to be dumbed down, way down, or most Westerners won't get the aha.  And haiku without kigo (whatever you wanna call it) altogether would probably be more effective. 

'Dain Direach', eh Colin - 'fixed measure'? Sounds a bit like 'teikei' to me: strict form. In Japanese. Well, romaji anyway.

Which begs the question: which 'haiku' are we talking about? Because all the stuff about 'haiku not using metre, assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia' - who made that up? And why?

winter melons --
so great the change
in each other's face

Best wishes, John

I read an interesting comment today: "There are physical laws that give form. But most of what you are has nothing to do with form.  Thus, the laws do not apply."   As far as I'm concerned haiku both is and is beyond poetry... but the essense of haiku is the revelation of some truth or essence that has it's own form...a form that can't be compromise without doing harm to that truth or essence.   Poetry and haiku both are often beyond form or definition.  

Yes, it is.

I tend to start with the following basic description when asked to define poetry:

Words patterned on the page to produce an effect on the reader. Or at a reading, the pace, tone of voice of the poet, the value placed on certain words and sounds, that act as a signal that it is not a piece of prose or a speech

For me, the reference to reader or audience is essential because that introduces the idea of craft, conscious decision making, which, in turn, places the writing within the realm of literature as opposed to self expression or therapy. Not that I feel there's anything wrong with either of those - we all write just for ourselves at times. 

So I'd say that haiku can be poetry if it's consciously crafted. As far as elements of craft go, perhaps that's a good topic for another thread?

I think Haiku is poetry.  The definition of poetry has pretty much been shattered by many writers of, for lack of a better word, standard poetry.  Free verse I do not understand or appreciate.  But the tradition of writers like Carl Sanburg epitimize poetry in my opinion.  They are examples of using few words to say a lot and generally do have a lyric quality to them.  When all is said and done, though, I think one has to admit that poetry, especially Haiku, is a state of mind.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Tom

Good thoughts all.  As a retired educator who still volunteers with poetry in schools and a member of Poetry West in Colorado Springs, I relate to the comments about 5-7-5 and nature.  Decades ago, that may have been a good way to teach syllables in 3rd grade.  Period.   I am doing my best to instill a deeper sense of all that haiku and all eastern poetry is and can be.  I am saddened to know some highly esteemed poets who treat haiku as a jokey little pastime.  Rather amusing, actually.

I think haiku is like modern art.  Some people "get it" and some people don't. 

I didn't understand haiku at all until I started writing scifaiku.  For me, that was a doorway into the form.  I think haiku is an incredibly demanding form of poetry.  Haiku requires stripping down all of the obviously explanatory and flowery words - the ones most people relate to - until you are left with bare essence of form.  Wasn't it Mark Twain who ended a letter with "I would have written I shorter letter but I didn't have enough time?"     

Haiku (or hokku) is the start of a poem...and suddenly one knows that the rest of the poem is not needed.

"Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley."

Charles Simic
from Our Angelic Ancestor
from the book, Dimes Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, 1992 Ecco Press

I feel haiku is the heart of all writing.Now whether that makes it poetry or not...?

I quite like haiku to contain a title. But i got mine rejected by a haiku magazine because they said "True haiku has no title" does it have to be so?

Hello,

I would say yes, it has to be that way, for two reasons.  One, due to the brevity of haiku, a title would take up a disproportionate amount of space in relation to the poem.  (It would be rather like a sonnet with a 20-word title, would it not?)  And two, going without titles has become the accepted convention in contemporary haiku journals.

My question is, why do you like titles?  Are you relying on them to carry a message that isn't embedded in the haiku itself, or do you not trust your reader to "get it"? Or . . . ?

Usually, the first line of the haiku is referenced the way a title would be.  So you still have something that functions the same way in that regard.

Hope this helps!

cat

Quote from: dirk diggler on December 07, 2010, 06:27:21 AM
I quite like haiku to contain a title. But i got mine rejected by a haiku magazine because they said "True haiku has no title" does it have to be so?

I don't like rules, so I wouldn't say that haiku shouldn't have titles. And maybe single word titles that read on into the body of the haiku could work quite well... hmmm, I might give that a go : ) However writing them and publishing them are two different things - at the mercy of editors etc. But I think most editors are open to new ideas if they can see a conscious reason for the writer's decision making.

For me, a title can have a weighty presence on the page, so I'd be inclined not to title, and risk overwhelming the haiku, and use that information/idea in the haiku itself, even if that means it would be a 4 line haiku. Also, perhaps playing around with the title and the text together you might discover another form that the material is asking for: tanka, short free verse poem etc

The question begs more questions. Why isn't haiku popular? Does haiku stay in a corner away from the mainstream of what the culture consumes? Most haiku are mostly read/consumed by other haiku poets. For example, haiku isn't rap music. How do we make haiku more popular? Can we reach a mass audience in the West as it occurs in Japan with a whole array of kigo? glad to be here, paul

Paul, you bring up a very interesting point. I don't like rap music, but have wondered if there is a bridge there. Some way to marry music and haiku.

It is a challenge to bring haiku to more people, but keep its integrity in.

Preprequel:  What is poetry?
Prequel: What is haiku?

I've wrestled with the second much more than with the first. 

The definition I'm most likely to pin down is that haiku is a poetic notion of Shiki and was not directed to any other language than Japanese.  Shiki's notion was to coin "haiku" as rooted from "hokku" and renku.

So, until if I go on the above, I would soley have to address the question, "Is Haiku Poetry?" in relation to Japanese.  The answer to that would be that the Japanese believe that haiku is poetry, I feel.

Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.


from 'Some like Poetry' - Wislawa Szymborska
- translated by Regina Grol

Histoire des Mentalities


mental collectif with or without the qualifying adjective
all needing sensitive support of thought.
schemata of perception and appreciation:
a reciprocal dependence that unite
materiaux d'idees formless and meaningless;
or meaning less if viewed as form?

colin stewart jones :)

anything is poetry if it has a metric flow even prose can have poetic moments even speech can be poetry but if it lacks metrical motion like a car without a motor or a boat without a rudder..it becomes prose


so to answer: if the haiku poem flows like a river at eventide it is poetry if it lapses into quotidian aphorisms it is prose


in summation:  haiku can be poetry or prose


hairy (fusion of haiku and senryu) 

Quote from: hairy on December 11, 2010, 06:32:34 AM
anything is poetry if it has a metric flow even prose can have poetic moments even speech can be poetry but if it lacks metrical motion like a car without a motor or a boat without a rudder..it becomes prose


so to answer: if the haiku poem flows like a river at eventide it is poetry if it lapses into quotidian aphorisms it is prose


in summation:  haiku can be poetry or prose


hairy (fusion of haiku and senryu) 

hairy (fusion of haiku and senryu) 

;))

nice fun "hairy"

PS... in Japanese, haiku is ha.i.ku and senryu is se.n.ryu

interesting reading, agreeing with a lot here, Don, adding to your voice often a unique voice.
and is it mere reportage, well hopefully it trancends reportage, but also some reportage can also be poetry...  :)

Gael said:

Quote from: Gael  Bage on February 11, 2011, 05:55:16 AM
interesting reading, agreeing with a lot here, Don, adding to your voice often a unique voice.
and is it mere reportage, well hopefully it trancends reportage, but also some reportage can also be poetry...  :)

It depends what you mean by reportage.  It's interesting that most non-fiction books (but nonetheless creative writing) about Iraq and Afghanistan are done by journalists.  There may be some poetry type scansion in some writing but they are certainly doing a better job than poets at the moment with exceptions of:
Brian Turner: http://www.amazon.com/Here-Bullet-Brian-Turner/dp/1882295552 (http://www.amazon.com/Here-Bullet-Brian-Turner/dp/1882295552)
Brian Turner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Turner_%28American_poet%29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Turner_%28American_poet%29)

And I've had the privlige of seeing Dikra Ridha's raw poetry at degree level workshops during my Masters Degree at Bath Spa University. 

Dikra so impressed one publisher that she got a book deal straight out of the Masters: http://carrieetter.blogspot.com/2010/06/dikra-ridhas-ordinary-evening.html (http://carrieetter.blogspot.com/2010/06/dikra-ridhas-ordinary-evening.html)

You can read her Ordinary Evening in its final version in the weblink above.

Dikra's family still live in Baghad.

So it depends what you mean by reportage, and which reportage you consider poetic, and what you mean by poetic aspects of reportage. 

This is an interesting area to bring up, thanks Gael!

Alan

For me, a successful haiku is a breath-long prose poem with gaps embedded in it where words would normally be expected to be and instead little intimations of eternity shine through.

It certainly comes from the same place in me as poetry: it feels the same when inspiration strikes. And I get that feeling in no other activity. The only difference is the meticulousness of my process of revision. My standards for haiku are much, much higher and more exacting. That doesn't mean it's not a poem, it's just that there is a lot of craft in the artistic process.

Even at it's most basic form of just stating what is can be likened to photography, which is generally accepted as an art form. But most haiku go beyond that to a deeper meaning or truth.

Thank you everyone for a very interesting discussion. I have been wondering about the way for me writing haiku differs from other parts of my poetic practice, and sometimes I think I want to hold on to a short poem that might look like haiku but is not, because it is not so much about capturing a moment in careful observation without telling too much, but about a different kind of poetic association. This discussion is helpful to me in distinguishing better between short poems that are not haiku and the kind of thing that may be an effective haiku. In some of my writing I often rely on the unconscious to call forth images and associations and then refine and shape these. But there are other writings (among them haiku) that are more immediately attentive to the moment and place. I found the discussion of "is haiku poetry?" very helpful.

Ezra Pound once wrote that in his opinion 'music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance;that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from
physical movement.'
So what am I trying to say about haiku as poetry? That for me(at the moment) it needs to have musicality and also some sense of movement within its inner space. My current formula for thinking about haiku is CUFEM. C for Communicattes U for Universality F for Feeling E for Epiphany and M for Musicality.

Oh, I like it, Diana! Thank you for the excellent quotation, too!

Mary

I agree with Diana..haiku without cadence is like a car without an engine--its driving force. If I have a choice between two similar words and one is slightly better but jars the line and the other enhances the cadence (perhaps better alliteration) , I'll opt for the latter every time. I say this because I believe haiku is poetry and poetry is motion, movement (and alliteration one of its greatest tools--if used subtlely).

Just some musings..

Al  

I want to call attention to an interesting thread currently happening on the blog. It seems to relate to this question of haiku and poetry, among other things. Be great if a few people here picked up on it.

Here's the link:

http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2011/04/21/haikunow-winners/comment-page-1/#comments


tray

How can I describe the Cosmos within me?

mountain lake
the night air fills the loon's call
(http://youtu.be/kiXjCifQn0w)

I think Don hit on something important when he wrote, "is haiku JUST poetry".  Early on in my haiku journey I noticed that haiku had dimensions that seemed unique.  When I read haiku (and later wrote them) I could experience other dimensions much as a person color-blind from birth might feel if they could suddenly see the full spectrum of color.  When I read about haiku and satori, I wondered if haiku had a spiritual dimension.  To help answer this question, I bought Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan and Haiku the sacred art A Spritual Practice in three lines.  Both of these books were interesting, but I concluded that the spiritual aspect came from actually experiencing haiku and could not be created merely by talking about it. 

I think haiku has unique properties that set it apart from other literature.  Part of it for me has to do with the brevity of the form.  With few words to go on, the mind searches among them for meaning.  This allows haiku to slip beyond words to reach parts of us that are more primitive or preconscious and goes into places more conventional poetry and literature may be unable to access.

Another unique aspect of haiku is its use of ma space.  The reader steps into the poem and helps to interpret it rather than having all meaning neatly packaged and delivered whole.  The part of a reader that does the stepping in is often the highly intuitive part.  States of high intuition are often associated with spiritual phenomenon and visionary states.  Again, this seems to take it a bit beyond where ordinary language can go.  For me, haiku can be both poetic and religious because experiencing a fine haiku takes me to both places.  I also have a heightened sense when I read other good poetry, but it does not take me to the special places haiku can go.

I don't know if haiku can be considered just poetry.  I studied contemporary literature at a university and never saw a haiku.  To me this is sad.  Recently, I had some of my haiku accepted for publication in the Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Art, a journal that features many forms of literature and art.  Haiku can certainly hold its own with other forms of poetry, but there is a part of me that wants it to always have its own special place even as I contribute to placing it in the mainstream myself.

So in answer to the question posed by Jim Kacian I think I'd like to respond with Don's question: is haiku JUST poetry?  Yes it's poetry, but there's so much more to say and experience than the original question can contain.  Like many others here, I would like to see haiku take its rightful place as a unique art.  I would also say that part of haiku is atate of being.  Rebecca Drouilhet

A bit of thread revivification going on, but there's interesting stuff in here!

QuoteI think haiku has unique properties that set it apart from other literature.  Part of it for me has to do with the brevity of the form.  With few words to go on, the mind searches among them for meaning.  This allows haiku to slip beyond words to reach parts of us that are more primitive or preconscious and goes into places more conventional poetry and literature may be unable to access.

A lot of great poetry and literature, I think, does this as well.  (Although there are certainly aspects to haiku that aren't in a lot of other forms of poetry, the same is just as true for those other forms.)

Quote from: Lorin on December 09, 2010, 04:44:21 PM
Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.


from 'Some like Poetry' - Wislawa Szymborska
- translated by Regina Grol

I love this.  Thank you for sharing, Lorin.

As for "is haiku poetry?" I believe it is.  It fits a lot of the formal definitions, and more importantly for me, tends towards poetic functions and diction rather than those used in regular speech like prose or other forms of communication. 

It's certainly a specific type of poetry, but I think it does a bit of a disservice to good poetry of all forms to say that haiku is necessarily better.  (So as for "is haiku JUST poetry?" my answer is: "Well, no.  But poetry isn't JUST poetry, either.")

Poetry that's just poetry isn't doing its job.