The Haiku Foundation Forums

Thank you Al for explaining! It helped a lot!  :)

John, thanks for your input. I really appreciate it!

Sandra, thank you for you response. I'm pretty sure my friend said "assonance". I haven't heard of "consonance" before. Thanks for explaining it to me.

I have learned about assonance and alliteration. I'll remember to use them in moderation ;)

Josie

Hi Al! Thanks for the response. My friend said the assonance is in the 3rd line: over the rooftops-- which has the repetitions of the vowel "o".
Can you tell me more about alliteration?

Josie

Hi mentors! I posted this haiku at Nahaiwrimo:

first light
the swelling redness
over the rooftops

One of my new FB friends said that I just used assonance in this haiku. Could you please explain more about assonance? Thank you...

josie

Alan, thank you for all the information. I'm very poor with haiku knowledge. There is so much haiku history to be learned and I'm thankful for every opportunity that come my way. For now, I don't have much time to read a lot because I'm in the peak of busyness of my life. I have 3 teen-agers, 4 younger kids and a toddler :)
plus I home school my kids. I would like very much to learn though as much as I can. When my kids are older I would like to study haiku in a deeper way.

I now know that you can have many English translations of a Japanese haiku but still not enough to touch its deepest meaning.

Thanks again Alan and a good day to you!

Josie

Hi Gabi! Thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself. I'm very glad to know more about you. And I'm grateful to you for being one of the mentors.

Twenty-five years of Japanese haiku-- wow that's amazing!

I read some of the postings from the link you gave. They are very helpful. I will read some more later. Thanks for all the info you provided. Have a nice day!

Hi Alan! Thank you for the response.
I have read from the internet different translations of some of Basho's haiku. Like for instance, his "old pond" haiku with a bunch of translations from different people. ( I notice that some outshine the others.) These people that wrote the translations must know Japanese.

Have a nice day!

Josie

Hi mentors! I'm just wondering how you come to understand the haiku of the Japanese masters. Do you know Japanese, or at least some Japanese? I hope you don't think this question is too personal.
I'm forever grateful to you for all the haiku lessons I learned from the forum  :)

Josie

Thanks Don for getting back to me. I have learned a lot! I'm glad I asked this question! As I told the other mentors, I need to study more! Have a great day!

Josie

Hello Alan! I read your comments to the winning haiku from the link you gave me. Your comments are so wonderful and they gave me more dimension to those beautiful haiku. Thank you for the link.

You said that the overall feeling of a haiku (one image or two) is an overall new image. Maybe that is why many times when I read a haiku I can see every thing in the haiku in one scene in my brain.

I really appreciate all your help, Alan. I hope you won't get tired of me asking questions because I'll probably pop more questions some time  :-*

Josie

Hi John! Thank you for your enlightenment. I didn't realize that my two haiku implies more that one image. When I wrote them, I was just thinking of one image especially the "chopped onion". The first haiku-- that happened on Palm Sunday so I wrote Palm Sunday not thinking of the image it makes. It is obvious that I need to pay attention to haiku images and need to study more  :)

Thanks John for your response, you're very kind!

Josie

Hi Don! Here is a couple one-image haiku that I wrote :

Palm Sunday-
the April shower turns
to snow

late late night
crying over
chopped onions

In my first haiku, line 1-- Palm Sunday, is surely not an image because it is a certain day.
And in my second haiku, there is definitely one image. 

I would like to know how you clash two images as you said in your response.

Thank you very much, Don!

Josie

Hi Alan! Thank you for your response. I apologize for not writing back soon.

You said that "two image technique" is useful. Do you mean that the "two image" thing is just a technique, not a rule? Maybe I misunderstood what I read. I thought that the 2-image is a rule. If it's only a technique, it means it is not required. I've read a lot of haiku and write a lot of haiku with only one image, and I've been thinking that I break the rule. It makes me feel a little better knowing I did not break a rule.

Here's a couple of my favorite haiku by Basho that  I think have only one image:

under cherry-trees
  soup, the salad,
  fish and all...
seasoned with petals

husking rice,
a child squints up
to view the moon

And I should not forget to mention that Basho's most famous haiku about the frog jumping into the pond is clearly a one image haiku.

Alan, will you also please explain to me what you mean when you said-- a one image haiku may need more "tension"? 

Josie

I mentors! I have a question about "images" in haiku. I read a while ago that a haiku has to have two images, but I've read many haiku that I think were good but do not have two images. I'm a little confused  ???

Josie

Hello Don! Thank you for your response. I checked World Kigo Database. I've read some and I'm going to read some more. Yes, they are interesting!

Josie

Thank you Cat for the response. Yes, indeed it was very helpful :) It answered my doubts.

A wonderful day to you!

Josie