The Haiku Foundation Forums

Sounds interesting, I would post links rather than make people search. ;)

Thanks Colin, for making this available. I came for the haiku and stayed for the illustrations. Excellent!

Thanks Alan. Okay, I've got a project. Coming Spring '16- Diaries. Featuring 12 poems from 12 poets.
Stay tuned. :)

If I only know how, Allan. First I need to know how to select poems, that's a gargantuan task. To actually get poets to submit would be another matter. This journal if it will ever happen will be more exclusive than Mayfly. If mayfly features 14, this will feature only 12 poets. With maybe 3 pages dedicated to one haiku. the first page shows the original draft and iterations if any. the second, the poet's handwritten haiku and the 3rd page, the polished version. It gives you a glimpse of the poet's thought process.

If there are editors reading, here's an idea for a journal. A journal that gives you a peek into the poet's diary, like browsing someone's notebook and finding little gems scribbled on it's pages. Accepted poems would require poet's to give hand-written version. What do you think?

I've seen wonderful haiku crediting Kernels as first publication, but the link in the THF calendar appears to be broken. Anybody know what happened to Kernels? I'm just curious to see their layout. Thanks.

Thanks for replying Don. The samples you've given even without the em-dashes, I'm able to identify the cut within the poem.
—teetering grass ...
just moments ago
a dragonfly—
to me it reads, teetering grass/ just moments ago a butterfly. I see two images and the jux.
—oh snail!
you were there
yesterday—
reads to me, oh snail/ you were there yesterday, with the exclamation point working as the cut
the sample given on the blog:
hundreds of years
of the view of this garden
with fallen leaves . . .
reads like a sentence with ellipses, 'Hundred of years of the view of this garden with fallen leaves'...
I've been told that a haiku should not read like a sentence.

Hi Alan,
I found some some samples in the middle of L2, I have yet to see one at the end of L3.

the silence grows
teeth—a tree
with cracked windows

Scott Metz (R'r)

find me in the sounds
of sparkling brooks . . . young leaves
songs of forest birds

Robert Mainone (MH)

Quote from: Alan Summers on May 10, 2014, 11:08:21 AM
Hi Tristan,

All I can do is recommend copious reading of haiku, and include articles, essays, and book reviews.   I constantly read throughout pretty much every day.

Japanese haikai tend to be three units of 5-on, 7-on and 5-on whereas English-language haiku is often two units (with varying syllable counts).  ELHaiku tend to work better either with punctuation markers (we don't have word-phrases like the Japanese, for punctuation) at the end of line one or two, and very rarely in the middle of line two.

But I'd love examples of English-language haiku practitioners where they go a different route.

warm regards,

Alan

Hi Alan,
Thanks for your reply. I just revisited the page, and a user was exactly asking the same thing as you. To provide an example from ELH. Here's the sample given on the blog:
hundreds of years
of the view of this garden
with fallen leaves . . .

(Basho Translation by Gabi Greve)

Reading through that FB thread, the author seems to be very defensive. I would have dismissed the article other than the author is an editor and a published poet. How she is viewed in the haiku world, I don't know. But I do know of another editor who thinks that he is the second coming of Basho. I'm digressing. Back to this Basho sample, I don't know what to make of it. There might be other versions. I've seen ellipses on L3 in ELH but that is after the cut has already been establish in L1 or L2. I would like to keep an open mind, but that article is another fog in the misty forest of haiku.

I just came across this article, http://betweenwit-wonder.blogspot.ca/ . Almost all primers and how-to about haiku states that the cut or kire is on L1 or L2. But here the authors states; "The Single Theme verse may or may not be a sentence, ending with an ellipsis, question mark or exclamation mark.

When an ellipsis is used as the cut marker at the end of 3L it can convey several possible meanings: something left unsaid, a thought trailing off, a sigh, a sense of awe or of wonder."
The link was originaly posted on an FB page. This is something new to me. Very interested to hear other poets take on this.

Haiku is meant to be read not heard. That is the conclusion I came up after hearing poets read out their own poems. Unlike longer poetry, the brevity of haiku does not allow for buildup or setup of emotions when read aloud. Reading it allows me the leisure of pausing, contemplating and digesting the verse. In contrast, listening to the poets doesn't allow me to capture the emotions in their poems. I would love to hear other poet's views. Thanks.

P.S. You can listen to these readings at 'The Living haiku anthology' website.

I was reading an aloutte by Jan Turner titled 'spring eternal' and saw a lot of haiku in that poem, sample below;

blown against the walls...
pleated pinwheels turning 'round
In the springtime breeze

I googled hi name and found nothing, searched his name in this forum and also found nothing. I find the structure of aloutte is very similar to tanka. other poets must be laughing but this is something new to me. I was just wondering whether it's accidental, or he was really writing haiku.