Falling Cherry Blossoms

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Falling Cherry Blossoms - Haiku

General Thread ₇ Featured August 24 , 2010

The Orient's haiku thread, open to all members of AW who wish to share their own haiku poetry!

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry which has its origins in Tanka, the court poetry during the 9th-12th centuries. One of the most prominent haiku poets was Matsuo Basho who lived in Japan during the Edo Period.

Haiku are easy and fun to write. Haiku poems contain only three lines, and do not rhyme. It's the syllables which define the genre. In the most common form, the first and last lines contain five syllables, the middle line, seven syllables, for a total of seventeen syllables. A less common form of Haiku is written with 7-9-7 syllables. Either will do here.

Haiku typically capture some small moment in time, an impression of some event or thought, or an observance of nature, and that last line can sometimes sort of dangle, a thought in progress, so to speak. Sometimes several three line stanzas are compiled to form a longer poem.

Read through some of the previous posts on this thread to see what others have written to familiarize yourself with the form, and then join in! If you really want to get technical, Sementawy Horemheb has written a two part glossary of haiku terms HERE.

And if you find you enjoy composing haiku, I'm sure The Ten Philosophers Haiku group would welcome you as a member.

Further resources:
Haiku Society
How to Write a Haiku Poem

Created by:
* Ningyo Minamoto, Apr 15, 2004 - 06:14