The Haiku Foundation Forums

Sandra,

Thanks for your insights.

In answer to your query, I arranged lovers/bacteria into three lines with an audience in mind, that is, I wanted a pause to occur after each of the first two lines before the (presumably) surprise ending.

Here is my best-known two-word piece. It has been published at least 16 times from Cicada, 1979 to embryo: eye poems, 2103. Some editors (e.g. for Cicada, Eye To Eye With A Frog, 1981) have considered it to be an haiku. Others (e.g., Kaldron, 1990, The Wilson Quarterly, 1997) have treated it as a visual poem.

Thiiief

m ss ng

In either case, we are dealing with the continent of poetry where borders separating the different genres move back and forth depending on the era and its prevailing attitudes.

Dear Peter,  Alan, Tom, Sandra, Don, Paul and Lorin,

Peter, thank you for arranging this discussion.

Alan, you point out one of the toughest tests for poems, a live audience. I have read two-word haiku from a stage, but they only succeed after I give an introduction to the motivation behind them.  This requisite supports your view of their limitations.

Sandra, your examples from the work of Alan Wells are nice to know. Of course, I like to think that we (Eric, LeRoy and I) inspired him.

Tom, your perspective has put a couple of works at the top of my reading list.  I was also glad to be reminded of "felt meaning."

Don, your use of DNA as a metaphor for the true nature of a poetic form is a reality-check. Coincidentally (?), your signature haiku, with its "felt meaning" and wit, dovetails nicely with your stated attitude.

Paul, your views come closest to mine. In fact, they would have made an empathetic and illuminating introduction to either of the two collections mentioned earlier,  bifids and The Space Between. I particularly like the way you describe the pluses and minuses of two-word haiku in terms of "shared art."

Lorin, your critique ranged into territory outside my conscious awareness. I've seen Buñuel's and Dali's Un Chien Andalou more than once, but never connected the "cloud/razor/eye scene" to "eyelid  cloud." Now I won't be able to recall this two-word piece without relating it to the surrealist 1929 silent short. The same goes for Eisenstein's montage" technique" in The Battleship Potemkin.

Thank you all for your eloquent and informative analyses.

*****

In the early1980s, I became intrigued with finding the minimum number of words for a poem/haiku. One-word poems such as tundra by Cor van den Heuvel (1963) and lighght by Aram Saroyan (1965) were treated as jokes or failed experiments by most readers and I wanted to see what would happen with two-word poems— perhaps more readers would find them acceptable.

In 1984 John Curry printed bifids, a mini-chapbook of 14 of my paired nouns. When Marshall Hryciuk wrote a rave review in Inkstone (1984, 2:2), I thought I had struck the jackpot. The tiny collection of 28 words got four pages of explication.

Your collective response, however, has made me wonder whether two words are really enough. Perhaps the number of words for a poem should be at least three.

lovers
exchanging
bacteria              (CURVD H&Z,1983, #259)

brook
sunlight
Bach                 (Modern Haiku, 2010, 41:2)


What do you all think? Are three words the sine qua non for a poem?

(The above three-word haiku and several more appear in my latest collection, micro haiku: three to nine syllables 2014.)