HAIKU DIALOGUE – Literary Devices – repetition/parallelism

Literary Devices with Guest Editor Alex Fyffe

For this series, I’d like to focus on the use of various literary devices in haiku. We tend to think of these techniques as applicable to longer lyric poetry – haiku is often taught to be a form without literary trappings, a simple breath of a poem, honest and straightforward, without ornament. Of course, this is a misconception, as the best haiku tend to be very carefully crafted, with one good poem often going through several revisions. And just like their longer cousins, haiku are capable of tackling metaphor, simile (despite what you might have heard), personification, symbolism, allusion, and any number of other techniques. Each week, we will take an in-depth look at a different technique and apply it to our haiku.

next week’s theme: rhyme

To cap off our exploration of literary devices in haiku, we’re going to discuss the heresy of rhyme. But don’t worry! I’m not asking you to perfectly rhyme the end of line one with the end of line three, or to have perfect end rhymes on all three lines, or anything as utterly blasphemous as all that. End rhyme, of course, is not unheard of in haiku, but it is generally frowned upon, and probably for good reason. I once unknowingly bought a translation of Basho in which the translator had not only made all of the poems 5-7-5, but had also used perfect end rhymes on lines one and three in each one so that the poems read more as uneven rhyming couplets than haiku.

This is not to say that all perfect end rhymes are necessarily bad in haiku or senryu – I have occasionally seen examples that make it work, especially when the rhyme is at the end of lines one and two. End rhyme can also be effective for a haiku aiming at a more whimsical tone or looking to be outright humorous, as rhyme can produce a charming, funny effect if used well. But used in excess or in attempting to be serious or beautiful, the poems often lose a certain quality that we associate with haiku.

However, perfect end rhyme is not the only kind of rhyme, and I believe there are other ways to use rhyme effectively in all manner of haiku and senryu. I would like to primarily focus today on unconventional rhyme usage, particularly on internal rhyme, slant rhyme, and sight rhyme.

As opposed to end rhyme, which takes place at the end of different lines, internal rhyme happens either 1) within a single line, 2) at the end of one line and in the middle of another, or 3) in the middle of two different lines. First, here is an example of typical end rhyme:

Little Fly
Thy summer’s play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush’d away.

William Blake’s “The Fly” is written in short quatrains in which lines two and four always rhyme at the end. Now here is an example that uses all three types of internal rhyme:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore–
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

In “The Raven,” Poe utilizes end rhyme and various internal rhymes to great effect. Like the Blake example, we see lines two and four rhyming at the end. But in addition to that, Poe rhymes “dreary” with “weary” in line one and “napping” with “tapping” in line three, and he uses “rapping” in the middle of line four as an internal rhyme of both the line three end word “tapping” and the line three internal rhyme word “napping.” One of the reasons “The Raven” has endured is because, like many of Poe’s poems, it’s so much fun to say. Rhymes are popping off left and right in such an amusing rhythmic pattern, you can’t help but want to read it aloud.

Obviously, Poe’s internal rhymes are not very subtle, and subtlety might be better for haiku. There are ways to do this, though. A word at the end of line one, for instance, might find a rhyme in the middle of line two or three so that the reader doesn’t stop on the rhyme but reads straight through it, giving them the pleasure of the rhyme without the finality of sound produced by an end rhyme in a couplet or quatrain. To make up a poor example:

miss molly–
my sister discusses
the folly of monarchs

The rhyme stands out enough, but since we read straight through it to the ending non-rhyme, it doesn’t feel intrusive the way a perfect end rhyme usually does in haiku. Similarly, something like this might work:

new school year
the alums’ wadded gum
beneath each desk

Other tools we can draw upon in the effort to make good rhyming haiku are slant rhyme and sight rhyme. In the Blake example above, “Fly” and “play” are an example of two words that do not perfectly rhyme, the way “play” and “away” do, but which nearly rhyme because of the similarity of sounds and letters – the “fl” of “Fly” and the “pl” of “play” and the ending “y” help create this effect. Emily Dickinson used unconventional rhymes constantly, as in this example from “Because I could not stop for Death –”:

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

The ending sound of both “Chill” and “Tulle” are the same, only the vowel before them is different, making the rhyme feel slightly off. This kind of indirect rhyme is less forceful than so-called “perfect rhymes,” possibly making them a better tool for the haiku poet in general. Other examples of words like this: brat and fret, jam and dim, prance and fence, etc. The vowels are different, but the consonant ending is similar.

This may ring a bell, as we studied consonance and assonance in an earlier entry in this series. And just like these examples of “consonant rhyme,” you can also use assonance to create “assonant rhymes”: drum and among, round and stout, etc. Traditionally, we see these kinds of slant rhymes used as end rhymes in poetry, making them stand out and declare themselves as rhymes. If we attempt to use them as internal rhymes, I do not know if they will have precisely the same effect. But slant rhymes might be the most effective way of incorporating end rhyme in haiku. Again, some poor examples from me just as illustrations of how slant rhymes might look and sound:

in a huff
members of the staff
refill their cups

dustbroom–
a little brown beetle
stretches a limb

Sight rhyme, also known as eye rhyme, is one of the subtlest, as words of this type rhyme in the way they look on the page, not necessarily in the way they sound to the ear. We see an example of this at the end of Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”:

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

This is the most common usage of sight rhyme, words that look the same on the page but sound different to the ear. Even though “Wind” and “behind” look like perfect rhymes, they are pronounced differently, making the ending couplet feel looser than it otherwise might. In this case, the sight rhyme might also be considered a type of slant rhyme. But not all sight rhymes follow this pattern. For instance, “enough” and “although” look like perfect rhymes but do not sound at all similar, having both completely different vowel and consonant sounds. Here are some more examples of sight rhymes: plough and tough, pour and hour, prove and love, etc.

And so it seems that poets have the tools they need to intentionally rhyme without destroying the essence of haiku. The more obvious and blunt perfect ending rhymes of traditional poetry might make a haiku sink like a stone, but these softer approaches might just let it fly.

For this final literary device prompt, make effective use of internal rhyme and/or some form of unconventional rhyme in an original haiku.

The deadline is midnight Central Daylight Time, Saturday August 27, 2022.

Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) With your poem, please include any special formatting requirements & your name & residence as you would like it to appear in the column. A few haiku will be selected for commentary each week. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.

below is Alex’s commentary for repetition/parallelism:

For repetition, many poets chose to open and close with the same line, making their haiku circular:

every day
a new day
every day

Zelyko Funda
Hrvatska

climate is changing
fair weather having blown through
climate is changing

Bard Wrisley
Georgia

drawing the curtains
I see my neighbour
drawing the curtains

andrew shimield
UK

Funda’s poem, for example, reads like a mantra, something to be recited over and over again in the heart as a daily affirmation. Wrisley’s repetition mimics the all-too-familar way activists have been repeating the same warnings decade after decade, warnings that seem to be, to borrow a phrase, blowing in the wind. And shimield’s poem is circular but changes out who is “drawing the curtains,” making the final line, though word-for-word the same as the first, new again.

in my rear view …
a woman puts on makeup
in her rear view

Ravi Kiran
India

 

looking for you
in the warmth of your body
looking for me

in cerca di te
nel tepore del tuo corpo
in cerca di me

Giuliana Ravaglia
Bologna, Italy

These variations change only one word in the last line to great effect. Kiran’s repetition emphasizes the poem’s content – looking into the rear view mirror and seeing what’s reflected there, which, in this case, is another person looking into her mirror. The lines repeat much the way the experience repeats for Kiran; from line one to three only the viewer has changed. Ravaglia’s poem might also switch the subject doing the seeking from line one to three, but then again, it may not; the speaker may be looking both for “you” and for himself “in the warmth of your body.”

Some of the repetition poems stood out for their musicality. It’s hard not to read the following haiku without singing the words, or pronouncing them in one specific rhythm:

snowflake floats
snowflake swirls
still snowfall

Patricia Furstenberg
Pretoria, South Africa

 

red light green light
hop hop glance.. hop hop glance…
hop hop hop

Jerome Berglund
USA

When it comes to single-line repetition of the “year after year” variety, I found Sahlin’s haiku to be among the best:

harvest time
summer is removed
hay bale by hay bale

Marianne Sahlin
Sweden

The image of summer being taken away bale by bale – what an excellent turn of phrase!

watermelon
sibling war rages
seed by seed

Lorraine A Padden
San Diego, California

Padden’s poem has fun with words. It is a charming and straightforward poem about kids “fighting” by spitting watermelon seeds at each other. But “seed by seed” also suggests that sibling rivalry will continue for as long as people continue to spread their seeds, so to speak.

their full closet
his empty shoes

Kimberly Kuchar
Austin, Texas

Some poets opted for parallelism, and this one stood out because of its use of two lines, which is actually perfect for its purpose of juxtaposing these two images in order to contrast the crowded closet with a person’s absence.

to buy or not to buy the American dream

Bona M. Santos
Los Angeles, California

 

after apple picking
apple incense
apple stars

Matt Cariello
Bexley, Ohio

Finally, I wanted to bring up these two poems because in addition to using repetition, they are more fine examples of allusion in haiku. Santos plays a riff on Shakespeare, and Cariello uses Frost as a jumping off point.

Here are some other favorites that stood out for me:

night after night
she calls his name
in silence

Tuyet Van Do
Australia

 

signing
government form
at x x and x

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, Iowa

 

cold growing colder old bones

Alan Peat
Biddulph, UK

 

polar route the sun and the sun and the sun

Sue Courtney
Ōrewa, Aotearoa New Zealand

 

deadheading the petal
not ready to let go
let go

Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

weary moon sick of being sick

Susan Burch
Hagerstown, Maryland

 

summer’s end
the wind that blows through my hair
blows through the graveyard

Lorraine Schein
Queens, New York

 

raining
still raining
raining bullets

Teji Sethi
India

 

golden anniversary:
your side of the bed
my side of the bed

Neena Singh
Chandigarh, India

 

mountain cabin—
we become the fog
becomes us

Mona Bedi
Delhi, India

 

heirloom tomatoes
the same medication
as my father’s father

James Gaskin
Fukushima, Japan

& here are the rest of the selections:

still the still stillness of the still still

Lakshmi Iyer
India

 

blood
everywhere I see
only blood

Željko Vojković
Croatia

 

Plucking syllables
haiku loves me
it loves me not.

Caroline Ridley-Duff
UK

 

rainy day
her mum telling her to stop
telling lies

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

 

give and take give and take
the world full
of take take take

Stephen A. Peters
Bellingham, Washington

 

spring arrival
robin nods into a puddle
again and again

Suzanne Leaf-Brock
Ames, Iowa

 

expecting nothing
seeking nothing grasping nothing
full yellow moon

Deborah Bennett
Carbondale, Illinois

 

butterfly heart
flitted and floated
from crush to crush

Eavonka Ettinger
Long Beach, California

 

sigh of solitude
how many pine needles
under the pine trees

Dejan Ivanovic
Lazarevac, Serbia

 

many reflections
hands touching the wall
names touching the heart

Herbert Shippey
Tifton, Georgia

 

young in summer
old in winter
fuji

Charles Harper
Yokohama, Japan

 

yellow sun
a spent leaf
yellows

Jackie Chou
USA

 

lost at the sunrise
still dissolved at the sunset —
consecutive deaths

smarrita all’alba
al tramonto dissolto –
morti continue

Maria Cezza
Italy

 

echoes, echoes
still more echoes…
this search for my voice

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

going round
and round and round
another family argument

Louise Hopewell
Australia

 

at the crossroads
blues drift up
to the blue sky

Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, India

 

face to face
a scarecrow
and I

Alvin Cruz
Philippines

 

empty playground
some crows
crowing

Christopher Peys
Los Angeles, California

 

summer flows –
the fish always remains
mute as a fish

scorre l’estate –
il pesce rimane sempre
muto come un pesce

Dennys Cambarau
Sardinia, Italy

 

freesias
and on the windowsill …
freesias

Wendy Gent
Bristol, UK

 

blast after blast …
shattered hopes behind
shattered windows

Natalia Kuznetsova
Russia

 

barnside swift screeches screeches through trajets of moth baiting bats

simonj
UK

 

still morning
his side of the bed still empty…
still mourning

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

incessant snows
the station gets crowded
delay, delay, delay

Chen Xiaoou
Kunming, China

 

robin red over poppies to the sunset red

Helga Stania
Switzerland

 

ripples
across ripples
a crane walks slowly

Ram Chandran
India

 

looking
and still looking in the sky
a war refugee

Samo Kreutz
Ljubljana, Slovenia

 

a wiggle to the right
a wiggle to the left
hammock struggle

Sari Grandstaff
Saugerties, New York

 

rain keeps falling
and goes on falling
perseids shower

marilyn ashbaugh
Edwardsburg, Michigan

 

silencing us
an owl’s call
an owl’s reply

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois

 

drip drip drip . . .
moonlight on tulips’
yellow carpet

Bipasha Majumder (De)
India

 

one more autumn
one more creak
in my knee

Daniela Misso
Italy

 

withered lake
somewhere in the brown
brown-headed cowbird

Marcie Wessels
San Diego, California

 

tufts of clouds
in the warm air
tufts of poplar

ciuffi di nuvole
nell’aria tiepida
ciuffi di pioppo

Angiola Inglese
Italy

 

vast canopy
the birds I can hear
the birds I can’t

Bruce H. Feingold
Berkeley, California

 

somewhere today
a baby’s first words –
bombs bombs bombs

Dan Campbell
Virginia, USA

 

where you were dying
when I was being born
Stalingrad

Ruth Holzer
Herndon, Virginia

 

cherry blossoms
again and again
broken promises

Hla Yin Mon
Yangon, Myanmar

 

my pen
a river flowing
bank to bank

Minal Sarosh
Ahmedabad, India

 

his last letter
within seconds of reading
second reading

Vandana Parashar
India

 

glow worm cave
the glow
in our gaze

Kanjini Devi
The Far North, Aotearoa, New Zealand

 

Drip, drip, drip of sweat —
I yearn for the drip, drip, drip
of rain

Jenny Shepherd
London, UK

 

a tiffin box
inside a tiffin box
mom’s pickle

Daipayan Nair
Silchar, India

 

autumn wind
in every season
autumn wind

vento d’autunno
in ogni stagione
vento d’autunno

Maria Teresa Piras
Sardinia, Italy

 

the nightingale’s songs
survived the rats, the loathing—
the nightingale sings

(a tribute for the Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez)

Bittor Duce Zubillaga
Basque Country

 

anniversary. . .
your prayer flags
drip, dripping rain

Sonam Chhoki
Bhutan

 

sleet driving driving it home

Sarah Metzler
USA

 

evening shadows
overshadowing
my evening thoughts

Hifsa Ashraf
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

 

learning the mantra
of anger control. . .
cicadas, cicadas

Meera Rehm
UK

 

stunned sparrow…
I breathe out
when he breathes in

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

singer in the night
sings a song of hope
sings a song of love

Tsanka Shishkova
Bulgaria

 

beyond the ashes
after the flames
wild mint

Maxianne Berger
Outremont, Quebec

 

mountain tracks
the zig-zag crossings
of home-bound flocks

Ingrid Baluchi
North Macedonia

 

trembling white
rippling rose
roseate spoonbill rising at dawn

Dustin Hackfeld
Ingleside, Texas

 

swoop and drone of news copters
buzzards and crows
buzzards and crows…

John Pappas
USA

 

summer symphony—
all the koel does all day
is sing sing sing . . .

(the Asian koel is a member of the cuckoo family)

Rupa Anand
New Delhi, India

 

political arena –
from each candidate
yada yada yada

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio

 

flower moon
moonflowers
in full bloom

Pippa Phillips
Kansas City, Missouri

 

separation anxiety—
empty hangers
full custody

Adele Evershed
Wilton, Connecticut

 

a shore
mist on stone’s bridge
the other shore

Mircea Moldovan
Romania

 

loons mock
the lone mockingbird’s
faux tremolo

ron scully
Burien, Washington

 

shuffling and
reshuffling cards
a clean break

Richard Straw
Cary, North Carolina

 

cloud sky cloud sky hawk sky

petro c. k.
Seattle, Washington

 

mourning
the end of spring
summer morning

Andrew Markowski
San Antonio, Texas

 

plastic flowers
in plastic pots
autumn without her

Tony Williams
Scotland, UK

 

my chrysanthemums crying on my shoulder calling out my name

Marcia Burton
Salt Spring Island, Canada

 

autumn night
one by one by one . . . .
the shadows sneak in

Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India

 

in a home
his roses blooming
at home

Marisa Fazio
Australia

 

day in
day out
coffeespoons

Keith Evetts
Thames Ditton, UK

 

rusty pier
on its stairs
wave after wave

Minko Tanev
Bulgaria

 

out of the cave
into the clouds
dirt road to heaven

Zahra Mughis
Lahore, Pakistan

 

Our Father Who art . . .
Our Father . . . time for another
translation

Geoff Pope
Paducah, Kentucky

 

swirling, swirling
an ant on a leaf
in an eddy

Richard Matta
San Diego, California

 

lockdown
among weeping cherry blossoms
weeping cherry blossoms

Anna Yin
Ontario, Canada

 

the thunder
breaking the hot spell
the thunder

Mark Gilbert
UK

 

dew after dew
the drooping shadow
of a pink rose

Richa Sharma
India

 

night window . . .
letting the cat out
the moon in

Lori Kiefer
London, UK

 

a heart to heart
with my first child
autumn afternoon

Barrie Levine
Massachusetts, USA

 

backseat driver my backstory

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

 

mother’s lullaby–
I still hear her song
even now, even now

Lafcadio
USA

 

fishing hole…
a great blue
stalks, stalks, stalks minnows

Nancy Brady
Ohio, USA

 

crows gather –
a dark day
becomes darker

Annie Wilson
Shropshire, UK

 

hunger stones
appear in the river –
let it rain, let it rain!

Tomislav Maretić
Croatia

 

starting where it ends Tokyo trolley ending where it starts

Mark Meyer
Mercer Island, Washington

 

waterfall mist–
a gathering rainbow
ungathers gathers

Sushama Kapur
Pune, India

 

amid the rains
battered by the winds . . .
the oak still stands still

Mona Iordan
Romania

 

null tide dream after dream of waking

Ash Evan Lippert
South Carolina, USA

 

last rites . . .
passing on
passwords

P. H. Fischer
Vancouver, Canada

 

lost in my mind a book my mind lost in a book

John S Green
Bellingham, Washington

 

entanglements
tendril after tendril
the passionflower

Anette Chaney
Harrison, Arkansas

 

light rain morphing
into wave after wave
of puddle galaxies

Sharon Martina
Warrenville, Illinois

 

doors within doors
within the temple
within infinity

Sangita Kalarickal
USA

 

the big bang
dew
the big crunch

Jonathan Roman
Yonkers, New York

 

each month becoming unbecoming this old moon

Ruchita Madhok
Mumbai, India

Guest Editor Alex Fyffe teaches high school English in the Houston area. Although he has been writing haiku off and on for a decade, he only started submitting his work during the Global Event known as 2020. Since then his haiku and senryu have been published in various journals, including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Failed Haiku, Akitsu Quarterly, and the Asahi Haikuist Network. Alex’s first glimpse of haiku was in a collection of writings by Jack Kerouac, and he found the work of Issa while studying abroad in Japan, but he didn’t fall in love with the haiku until he discovered the free-form work of Santoka Taneda. Currently, Alex uses haiku in the classroom to ease students into poetry and build their confidence as readers and writers. Alex also posts haiku on Twitter @AsurasHaiku.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. A novice haiku poet, she lives in New York City.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

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