Is Haiku Poetry?

[whitedove]

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

[Stewart Baker]

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

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.

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.)

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.")

[Seanan]

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