The Japanese Angle
Writing haiku in one line or three lines .. this is not discussed often with my Japanese friends, because it does not constitute a problem to them.
Also dividing a haiku in fragment and phrase seems an American approach to formalizing and explaining haiku.
I have gotten another inspiration to this discussion, an approach I usually take when a Japanese cultural phenomenon just does not fit in any other language so easily: give the child a different name.
Let us not argue about the lines, but call them
SECTIONS / SEGMENTS.
A Japanese haiku comes in three sections:
kami go (the top five section)
naka shichi (the middle seven section)
shimo go (the lower five section)
So, given the natural rhythm of the Japanese language, it is easy to recognize these sections when spoken.
Writing these three sections usually depends on the Japanese paper you are given.
On a small slip (tansaku) it goes from top to bottom.
On a square decoration sheet (shikishi) it goes in three lines, usually from right to left.
NHK Haiku writes in three lines from right to left, name of the artist most left.
Very seldom it is written in three lines from left to right, the Latinized way.
With a wordprocessor, it comes out as one line, from left to right, if not formatted differently.
So, there are many ways to write it in Japanese too, but ALWAYS the three sections are clearly discernable.
Thus, in English it should not be such a big problem whether you write it in one line or in three, but you should take care to make your three sections easily discernable, most probably in a way of using the format of
short * long * short
for the sections as a kind of imitation of the original Japanes haiku parent.
And would you introduce writing your one-line haiku from top to bottom, just to imitate one way of Japanese writing?
Monoku, one line ku, one-liner, one sentence ku, run-on sentence ku, one-line poem and other expressions are also sometimes used in English.
But this often also refers to a different kind of poem.
MORE
http://happyhaiku.blogspot.jp/2000/07/one-sentence-haiku.html