Haiku in English

A haiku in English is an English language poem written in the Japanese poetry style known as haiku. The degree to which haiku in English resemble classic Japanese haiku varies, but many of these poems draw on short, concise wording and a reference to nature.

The first haiku written in English date from the late 19th century, influenced by English translations of traditional Japanese haiku. Many well-known English-language poets have written what they called "haiku", although definitions of the genre have remained disputable. Haiku has also proven popular in English-language schools as a way to encourage the appreciation and writing of poetry.

Typical characteristics

"Haiku" in English is a term sometimes loosely applied to any short, impressionistic poem, but there are certain characteristics that are commonly associated with the genre:

  • a focus on nature or the seasons[1][2]
  • a division into two asymmetrical sections that juxtaposes two subjects (e.g. something natural and something human-made, two unexpectedly similar things, etc.)
  • a contemplative or wistful tone and an impressionistic brevity[3][4][5]
  • "telegram style" syntax; no superfluous words
  • an emphasis on imagery over exposition
  • avoidance of metaphor and similes
  • non-rhyming lines

Some additional traits are especially associated with English-language haiku (as opposed to Japanese-language haiku):

  • a three-line format with 17 syllables arranged in a 5–7–5 pattern;[2][lower-alpha 1][6][7][8] or about 10 to 14 syllables,[9][10] which more nearly approximates the duration of a Japanese haiku[11] with the second line usually the longest. Some poets want their haiku to be expressed in one breath[12][13][14]
  • little or no punctuation or capitalization, except that cuts are sometimes marked with dashes or ellipses and proper nouns are usually capitalized

History

In Britain, the editors of The Academy announced the first known English-language haikai contest on April 8, 1899, shortly after William George Aston's pioneering History of Japanese Literature appeared.[15] The contest, number 27 of the magazine's ongoing series, drew dozens of entries,[16] and the prize was awarded to:

The west wind whispered,
And touched the eyelids of spring:
Her eyes, Primroses.

— R. M. Hansard

Australian editor Alfred Stephens was inspired by The Academy's contest to conduct a similar contest in the pages of The Bulletin. The prize for this (presumably first Australian) haiku contest went to Robert Crawford.[17]

American writers

In the United States, Yone Noguchi published "A Proposal to American Poets," in The Reader Magazine in February 1904, giving a brief outline of his own English hokku efforts and ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets! You say far too much, I should say."[18]

Ezra Pound's influential haiku-influenced poem, "In a Station of the Metro", published in 1913, has been widely regarded as a watershed moment in the establishment of English-language haiku as a literary form.[19]

During the Imagist period, a number of mainstream poets, including Pound, wrote what they called hokku, usually in a five-six-four syllable pattern. American poet Amy Lowell published several hokku in her book "What's O'Clock" (1925; winner of the Pulitzer Prize). Individualistic haiku-like verses by the innovative Buddhist poet and artist Paul Reps (1895–1990) appeared in print as early as 1939 (More Power to You—Poems everyone Can Make, Preview Publications, Montrose CA.). Inspired by R. H. Blyth's translations, other Westerners, including those of the Beat period, such as Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Richard Wright and James W. Hackett, wrote original haiku in English.

Snow in my shoe
Abandoned
Sparrow's nest

— Jack Kerouac, collected in Book of Haikus, 2003

African-American novelist Richard Wright, in his final years, composed some 4,000 haiku, 817 of which are collected in the volume Haiku: This Other World. Wright conformed to a 5-7-5 syllabic structure for most of these pieces.[20]

Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.

— Richard Wright, collected in Haiku: This Other World, 1998

In 1966 Helen Stiles Chenoweth compiled Borrowed Water, an early anthology of American haiku featuring the work by the Los Altos Roundtable. The experimental work of Beat and minority haiku poets expanded the popularity of haiku in English. Despite claims that haiku has not had much impact on the literary scene, a number of mainstream poets, such as W. H. Auden, Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, Etheridge Knight, William Stafford, W. S. Merwin, John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Ruth Stone, Sonia Sanchez, Billy Collins, (as well as Seamus Heaney, Wendy Cope, and Paul Muldoon in Ireland and Britain) and others have tried their hand at haiku.

In 1963 the journal American Haiku was founded in Platteville, Wisconsin, edited by the European-Americans James Bull and Donald Eulert. Among contributors to the first issue were poets James W. Hackett, O Mabson Southard (1911–2000), and Nick Virgilio. In the second issue of American Haiku Virgilio published his "lily" and "bass" haiku, which became models of brevity, breaking down the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic form, and pointing toward the leaner conception of haiku that would take hold in subsequent decades.

lily:
out of the water
out of itself

bass
picking bugs
off the moon

— Nick Virgilio, Selected Haiku, 1988

American Haiku ended publication in 1968 and was succeeded by Modern Haiku in 1969, which remains an important English-language haiku journal. Other early journals included Haiku Highlights (founded 1965 by European-American writer Jean Calkins and later taken over by the European-American writer Lorraine Ellis Harr who changed the name to Dragonfly), Eric Amann's Haiku (founded 1967), and Leroy Kanterman's Haiku West (founded 1967).

The first English-language haiku society in America, founded in 1956, was the Writers' Roundtable of Los Altos, California, under the direction of Helen Stiles Chenoweth.[21] The Haiku Society of America was founded in 1968 and began publishing its journal Frogpond in 1978. Important resources for poets and scholars attempting to understand English-language haiku aesthetics and history include William J. Higginson's Haiku Handbook (McGraw-Hill, 1985) and Lee Gurga's Haiku: A Poet's Guide (Modern Haiku Press, 2003).

Significant contributors to American haiku include Hackett, Virgilio, Charles B. Dickson (1915–1991), Elizabeth Searle Lamb (1917–2005), Raymond Roseliep (1917–1983), Robert Spiess (1921–2002), John Wills (1921–1993), Anita Virgil (b. 1931), and Peggy Willis Lyles (1939–2010).

downpour:
my "I-Thou"
T-shirt

— Raymond Roseliep, Rabbit in the Moon, Alembic Press, 1983

an aging willow—
its image unsteady
in the flowing stream

— Robert Spiess, Red Moon Anthology, Red Moon Press, 1996

Other major figures still active in the American haiku community include Lee Gurga, Christopher Herold, Gary Hotham, Jim Kacian, Michael McClintock, Marlene Mountain, Marian Olson, Alan Pizzarelli, Alexis Rotella, John Stevenson, George Swede, vincent tripi, Michael Dylan Welch, and Ruth Yarrow. Examples:

Just friends:
he watches my gauze dress
blowing on the line.

— Alexis Rotella, After an Affair, Merging Media, 1984

Little spider,
will you outlive
me?

— Cor van den Heuvel, Haiku Anthology 3rd ed., 1999

meteor shower...
a gentle wave
wets our sandals

— Michael Dylan Welch, HSA Newsletter XV:4, Autumn 2000

Pioneering haiku poet Cor van den Heuvel has edited the standard Haiku Anthology (1st ed., 1974; 2nd ed., 1986; 3rd ed. 1999). Since its most recent edition, another generation of American haiku poets has come to prominence. Among the most widely published and honored of these poets are John Barlow, Cherie Hunter Day, Carolyn Hall, paul m., John Martone, Chad Lee Robinson, Billie Wilson, and Peter Yovu. Newer poets exemplify divergent tendencies, from self-effacing nature-oriented haiku (Allan Burns) to Zen themes perpetuating the concepts of Blyth and Hackett (Stanford M. Forrester), poignant haiku-senryū hybrids in the manner of Rotella and Swede (Roberta Beary), the use of subjective, surreal, and mythic elements (Fay Aoyagi), emergent social and political consciousness (John J. Dunphy), and genre-bending structural and linguistic experimentation as well as "found haiku" (Scott Metz).

The first Haiku North America conference was held at Las Positas College in Livermore, California in 1991, and has been held every other year since then, directed by Garry Gay, Deborah P Kolodji, Paul Miller, and Michael Dylan Welch. Conferences have been Livermore, California (1991, 1993), Toronto (1995), Portland, Oregon (1997), Evanston, Illinois (1999), Boston (2001), New York City (2003), Port Townsend, Washington (2005), Winston-Salem, North Carolina (2007), Ottawa (2009), Seattle (2011), Long Beach, California (2013), Schenectady, New York (2015), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (2017), Winston-Salem again (2019), and Victoria, British Columbia (2021).

The American Haiku Archives, the largest public archive of haiku-related material outside Japan, was founded in 1996. It is housed at the California State Library in Sacramento, California, and includes the official archives of the Haiku Society of America, along with significant donations from the libraries of Lorraine Ellis Harr, Jerry Kilbride, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Francine Porad, Jane Reichhold, and many others.

In 2010, Michael Dylan Welch founded National Haiku Writing Month, also known as NaHaiWriMo. It has been held in February of each year, starting in 2011, with the objective to write at least one haiku per day all month long—"the shortest month of the year for the shortest genre of poetry," according to Welch.

Variant forms

Although the majority of haiku published in English are three lines long, variants also occur.

One line

The most common variation from the three-line standard is one line, sometimes called a monoku. It emerged from being more than an occasional exception during the late 1970s.[22] The one-line form, based on an analogy with the one-line vertical column in which Japanese haiku are often printed, was lent legitimacy principally by three people:[22]

  • Marlene Mountain was one of the first English-language haiku poets to write haiku regularly in a single horizontal line
  • Hiroaki Sato translated Japanese haiku into one line in English
  • Matsuo Allard wrote essays in its favor and published several magazines and chapbooks devoted to the form, in addition to practicing it

The single-line haiku usually contains fewer than seventeen syllables. A caesura (pause) may be appropriate, dictated by sense or speech rhythm (following the Japanese tradition of a break, marked by the Kireji[23]), and usually little or no punctuation.[24] This form was used by John Wills and, more recently, has been practiced by poets such as M. Kettner, Janice Bostok, Jim Kacian, Chris Gordon, Scott Metz, Stuart Quine, John Barlow, and many others.

an icicle the moon drifting through it

— Matsuo Allard, Bird Day Afternoon, High/Coo Press, 1978

pig and i spring rain

— Marlene Mountain, Frogpond 2.3-4, 1979

the thyme-scented morning lizard's tongue flicking out

— Martin Lucas, Presence 39, 2009

i hope i'm right where the river ice ends

— Jim Kacian, Frogpond 35.2, 2012

As the last two examples in particular illustrate, the one-line form can create a variety of ambiguities involving the perceived placement of cuts and the grammatical status of individual words, thereby allowing for multiple readings of the same haiku. A variation of the format breaks the line at the caesura or pause.[25]

One word

At its most minimal, a single word may occasionally be claimed to be a haiku:

tundra

— Cor van den Heuvel, the window-washer's pail, 1963

core

— John Stevenson, Live Again, 2009

The first was printed alone on an otherwise blank page and arguably only "works" in that context. The second example is an allusion to the first and also depends on its placement at the center of a haiku collection.

Four or more lines

Haiku of four lines (sometimes known as haiqua)[26] or longer have been written, some of them "vertical haiku" with only a word or two per line. These poems mimic the vertical printed form of Japanese haiku.

beneath
leaf mold
stone
cool
stone

— Marlene Wills, the old tin roof, 1976

The translator Nobuyuki Yuasa considered four lines more appropriate in his translations, being closest to the natural conversational rhythm of the colloquial language of haiku, also that three lines did not carry the weight of hokku and found it impossible to use 'three lines' consistently for his translations.[27]

The contemporary poet John Martone has written a vast number of vertical haiku.

Circle

Haiku have also appeared in circular form (sometimes known as cirku)[26] whereby the poem has no fixed start or end point.

Fixed form

In the "zip" form developed by John Carley, a haiku of 15 syllables is presented over two lines, each of which contains one internal caesura represented by a double space.[28][29]

buoyed up  on the rising tide
a fleet of head boards  bang the wall
— John Carley, Magma No 19, 2001

A fixed-form 5-3-5 syllable (or 3-5-3 word) haiku is sometimes known as a lune.[30][31]

Publications in North America

The leading English-language haiku journals published in the U.S. include Modern Haiku, Frogpond[32] (published by the Haiku Society of America), Mayfly (founded by Randy and Shirley Brooks in 1986), Acorn (founded by A. C. Missias in 1998), Bottle Rockets (founded by Stanford M. Forrester), The Heron's Nest (founded by Christopher Herold in 1999, published online with a print annual), and Tinywords (founded by Dylan F. Tweney in 2001). Some significant defunct publications include Brussels Sprout (edited from 1988 to 1995 by Francine Porad), Woodnotes (edited from 1989 to 1997 by Michael Dylan Welch), Hal Roth's Wind Chimes, Wisteria, and Moonset (edited from 2005 to 2009 by an'ya (Andja Petrović)). The largest publisher of haiku books in North America is Jim Kacian's Red Moon Press.[33] Other notable American publishers of haiku books include Press Here, Bottle Rockets Press, Brooks Books, and Turtle Light Press.

Publications in other English-speaking countries

In the United Kingdom, leading publications include Presence (formerly Haiku Presence),[34] which was edited for many years by Martin Lucas and is now edited by Ian Storr, and Blithe Spirit, published by the British Haiku Society[35] and named in honor of Reginald Horace Blyth. In Ireland, twenty issues of Haiku Spirit edited by Jim Norton were published between 1995 and 2000. Shamrock, the online journal of the Irish Haiku Society edited by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, has been publishing international haiku in English since 2007. In Australia, twenty issues of Yellow Moon, a literary magazine for writers of haiku and other verse, were published between 1997 and 2006 (issues 1-8 were edited by Patricia Kelsall; issues 9-20 by Beverley George). Nowadays Paper Wasp[36] is published in Australia, Kokako[37] in New Zealand and Chrysanthemum[38] (bilingual German/English) in Germany and Austria. Two other online English-language haiku journals founded outside North America, A Hundred Gourds and Notes from the Gean, are now defunct. John Barlow's Snapshot Press[39] is a notable UK-based publisher of haiku books. The World Haiku Club publishes The World Haiku Review.[40]

Websites

International websites have developed for the publication of haiku in English including: The Living Haiku Anthology;[41] The Living Senryu Anthology,[42] Under the Basho,[43] Failed Haiku,[44] Wales Haiku Journal,[45] and Poetry Pea.[46] In addition, personal websites such as Michael Dylan Welch's Graceguts[47] provide extensive haiku resources with essays, reviews, and poems.

Notable English-language haiku poets

See also

Notes
  1. Comprising 5 syllables on the first line, 7 on the second and 5 on the third

References
  1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2009. A Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons.
  2. Definition of haiku by the Haiku Society of America
  3. Garrison, Denis M. Hidden River: Haiku. Modern English Tanka Press. p. iii. ISBN 978-0-615-13825-1.
  4. Reichhold, 2002 p.21
  5. Gurga, 2003 p.105
  6. "How to Write a Haiku Poem: Haiku Examples and Tips". Creative Writing Now. William Victor, S.L. Retrieved 2013-05-14. Traditionally, haiku is written in three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line.
  7. "Send your name & message to Mars!". Going to Mars with MAVEN. University of Colorado: Boulder. Retrieved 2013-05-14. For the MAVEN contest, we are defining a haiku as a poem made of three lines; the first and last lines must have exactly five syllables each and the middle line must have exactly seven syllables.
  8. Shirane, Haruo. Love in the Four Seasons, in Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Orientalia Pragensia XV, 2005, p135
  9. Ross, Bruce; How to Haiku; Tuttle Publishing 2002 p.19 ISBN 0-8048-3232-3
  10. Gurga, Lee; Haiku - A Poet's Guide; Modern Haiku Press 2003 p.16 ISBN 0-9741894-0-5
  11. Higginson, William J., The Haiku Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1985, pp. 101-102 ISBN 0-07-028786-4.
  12. Spiess, Robert; Modern Haiku vol. XXXII No. 1 p. 57 "A haiku does not exceed a breath's length." ISSN 0026-7821
  13. Reichhold, Jane; Writing and Enjoying Haiku - A Hands-On Guide; Kodansha 2002 p.30 and p.75 ISBN 4-7700-2886-5
  14. Gurga, 2003, p.2 and p.15
  15. https://archive.org/details/academyliteratur56londuoft/page/414
  16. https://archive.org/details/academyliteratur56londuoft/page/438
  17. Tessa Wooldridge, "Haiku in the Bulletin, 1899," Australian Haiku Society, July 7, 2008
  18. Yone Noguchi, "A Proposal to American Poets," The Reader Magazine 3:3 (Feb. 1904): 248.
  19. Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, eds. Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 2013
  20. Richard Wright's haiku on Terebess Asia Online
  21. Biography of Lorraine Ellis Harr on the Aha Poetry website
  22. Van den Heuvel, Cor. The Haiku Anthology 2nd edition. Simon & Schuster 1986. ISBN 0671628372 p10
  23. Higginson, William, 'From One-line Poems to Haiku' Haiku Clinic #3 , Simply Haiku.com
  24. William J. Higginson. From One-line Poems to One-line Haiku
  25. "BROKEN MONOKU- haiku in one broken line". MONOKU. Retrieved 11 November 2015.
  26. Gill, Stephen Henry et al., editors. Seasons of the Gods Hailstone Haiku Circle, Kansai, 2007. ISBN 978-4-9900822-3-9 p.2
  27. Yuasa, Nobuyuki, Introduction 'The Narrow Road and other Travel sketches' by Matsuo Basho, Penguin Classics, London 1966 ISBN 9780140441857
  28. Zip School on Carley's website
  29. Zips in Magma No 19 - Winter 2001
  30. The Lune: The English Language Haiku by Holly Bliss at GoArticles.com
  31. Lipson, Greta B. Poetry Writing Handbook: Definitions, Examples, Lessons. Lorenz Educational Press, 1998. ISBN 9781573101080 p53
  32. http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/
  33. https://www.redmoonpress.com/
  34. http://haikupresence.org/home
  35. "Blithe Spirit". British Haiku Society. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  36. https://australianhaikusociety.org/tag/paper-wasp/
  37. http://kokako1.tripod.com/
  38. http://www.chrysanthemum-haiku.net/
  39. http://www.snapshotpress.co.uk/
  40. https://sites.google.com/site/worldhaikureview2/
  41. https://livinghaikuanthology.com/
  42. https://senryu.life/
  43. https://www.underthebasho.com/
  44. https://failedhaiku.com/
  45. https://www.waleshaikujournal.com/
  46. https://poetrypea.com/
  47. http://www.graceguts.com

Further reading
  • The Haiku Society of America. A Haiku Path. Haiku Society of America, Inc., 1994.
  • Henderson, Harold G. An Introduction to Haiku. Hokuseido Press, 1948.
  • Henderson, Harold G. Haiku in English. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1967.
  • Higginson, William J. and Harter, Penny. The Haiku Handbook, How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku. Kodansha, 1989. ISBN 4-7700-1430-9.
  • Higginson, William J. Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac. Kodansha, 1996. ISBN 4-7700-2090-2.
  • Hirshfield, Jane. The Heart of Haiku (Kindle Single, 2011)
  • Rosenstock, Gabriel. Haiku Enlightenment. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. ISBN 978-1443833790
  • Rosenstock, Gabriel. Haiku: the Gentle Art of Disappearing. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-1443811330
  • Sato, Hiroaki. One Hundred Frogs, from renga to haiku to English. Weatherhill, 1983. ISBN 0-8348-0176-0.
  • Suiter, John. Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades. Counterpoint, 2002. ISBN 1-58243-148-5; ISBN 1-58243-294-5 (pbk).
  • Yasuda, Kenneth. Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English. Tuttle, 1957. ISBN 0-8048-1096-6.

Anthologies
  • Global Haiku. Eds. George Swede and Randy Brooks. IRON Press, 2000.
  • Haiku 21. Eds. Lee Gurga and Scott Metz. Modern Haiku Press, 2011.
  • The Haiku Anthology. Ed. Cor van den Heuvel. Anchor Books, 1974
  • The Haiku Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Cor van den Heuvel. Simon & Schuster, 1986.
  • The Haiku Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Cor van den Heuvel. W.W. Norton, 1999.
  • Haiku in English. Eds. Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns. W.W. Norton, 2013.
  • Haiku Moment. Ed. Bruce Ross. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1993.
  • The San Francisco Haiku Anthology. Eds. Jerry Ball, Garry Gay, and Tom Tico. Smythe-Waithe Press, 1992.
  • The Unswept Path. Eds. John Brandi and Dennis Maloney. White Pine Press, 2005.
  • Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku. Ed. Allan Burns. Snapshot Press, 2013.

Periodicals

Archives

Techniques and papers
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