Springtime in Jackson
At work yesterday morning, we were putting together the weekly company newsletter, "Friday Facts." The girl who does the final layout emailed the entire office and asked if anyone would like to add a springtime haiku. I immediately threw something together for the newsletter and thought that I would share it with you here on my blog. It's called "Springtime in Jackson."

Pollen on the cars,
Yard man sayin', "How 'bout it?"
Hand me a Kleenex.

I smirked gleefully as I saw my impromptu haiku appear on the company newsletter...and maybe you did the same just now as you were reading. But then, my curiosity got the best of me. (And here's where some of you might wanna stop reading because I went into "research mode." If you do stop reading, skip down to the last paragraph where there's a homework assignment.)

I've been reading a book called Encountering God in the Psalms, which attempts to teach modern English readers how to interpret more precisely the truths of biblical Psalms, since they are after all translations of Hebrew poetry. Since I've had poetics on the mind, it struck me as highly presumptuous that some of us would sit around at work in 21st century America and attempt to construct an accurate English variant of a centuries-old Japanese poetic form.

As we know, a haiku is composed of 17 syllables, normally in a 5-7-5 linear breakdown, and since it is unrhymed, we assume that writing haikus is easy. The problem is that when we focus on nothing but the form of a haiku, we have lost any connection to its purpose or appropriate content.

I've consulted a few sources, and here are some points of interest. In the Japanese tradition, haikus are composed in one continuous vertical column of writing--this means, no line breaks. The line breaks in English haikus represent natural pauses or divisions in the thought progression of Japanese forms. Also, because Japanese syllables are on average much more condensed than modern English syllables, some scholars suggest that the brevity and essence of the Japanese haiku could probably be better captured in English through an 11-syllable structure, 3-5-3. Yet, even for the Japanese tradition, the syllabic count does not seem to be the most important thing.

Rather, the essence of haikus lie in their deeply profound mood in observing normal, everyday objects. One researcher encourages English haiku writers to focus on describing a single object or a single mood within the confines of the 17 syllables. After becoming more proficient in this activity, writers should try to portray two images within the same amount of syllables, which forces a comparison or contrast between the things that maybe we haven't thought about before. Cut out adjectives, adverbs, articles, and prepositions; allow the reader to make these semantic connections themselves. In such a way, haiku masters can describe normal things in brief, creative ways.

As a sidenote, Harmon and Holmon's Handbook to Literature lists several Western poets that capture the essence of the haiku without necessarily following its form. The first one listed is William Wordsworth. I've been aware for some time that Wordsworth has a strangely large Japanese following. Perhaps this is why.

Your task for this week...write a haiku and post it on this blog. It doesn't have to conform to the true spirit of the Japanese form, but see what you can come up with in our typical 17-syllable format. (This could be particularly amusing, especially if you're sitting at work with nothing to do.)