Korean Job Discussion Forums

[seoulsucker]

Work in the morning
is hard after poktanju
head like subwoofer

[jinks]

Hot Daegu summer
too mean to pay for air-con
electric fan whirring

Friends leaving Korea
promising to keep in touch
leaves fall from a tree

[Gopher]

Breaking, entering
The dark and empty places
Finding a big gun

[venus]

parting bittersweet
adieu, seperation hurts;
seeds blown by fates' winds

[gang ah jee]

Haiku are so Meiji era. Get with the times, people.

[khyber]

South Korea is
real really really really
really really real

[Poemer]

Please allow me to persuade you all that haiku are NOT written in syllabic lines of 5-7-5. Your grade school language arts teacher just didn't know any better.

[venus]

I don't know - read this on a haiku website that looked like it knew what it was talking about.... http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/

Haiku is, today, a 17-syllable verse form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7, and 5 syllables.

The metrical pattern of Haiku

Haiku-poems consist of respectively 5, 7 and 5 syllables in three units. In japanese, this convention is a must, but in english, which has variation in the length of syllables, this can sometimes be difficult.

Hey, if this is wrong, maybe you could explain why, rather than just state that it's wrong...? Much more helpful for people IMO.

[jajdude]

Haiku? Why bother?
Ah, I see, boredom presides,
nothing else to do.

[Pink Freud]

[Poemer]

sure venus. for starters, the reason stated above in your post; the two languages are completely incompatible grammatically when it comes to the "rules" for Haiku. writing lines of 5-7-5 was an imperfect, and I'm being charitable, attempt to shoehorn the form into english when it was first encountered.

then there is also the fact that Haiku themselves are bastardized from an older poetic practice of writing linked verses. Originally the thing we call a haiku was only the opening verse to much longer form. Haiku only recently, relatively speaking mind you, became embraced as a form in and of itself. So even the strict set of rules that a declining number of Japanese poets are choosing to follow, are themselves not particularly authoritative when the form is viewed in the context of its historical development.

There are a lot of ideas about what makes a Haiku a Haiku, and while a rare few practitioners still hold to the antiquated 5-7-5 rule, most have discarded it in favor of writing poems that hold more to the spirit of haiku.

Basically, Haiku can be thought of as any or all of the following things:

being the length of one breath, that is, when read aloud, you should not have to take a breath in order to complete the poem.

focusing on nature or the natural world (poems following the form of Haiku that focus on human nature and other topics have a special name; Senyru)

eschewing excess of language

distilling a moment into a striking image

speaking to the reader in an attempt to evoke feeling. often haiku possess what is sometimes referred to as the aha! moment; the moment in which the imagery and language of the poem comes together to provide the reader with some insight into the world

so, if you look at most modern english translations of poets such as Basho or Issa, or any Japanese haiku for that matter, you will rarely encounter a poem that follows the 5-7-5 form.

Hope this has been helpful, happy haiku writing and spread the word! 5-7-5 is no fun and has no real relation to Haiku other than it was convenient for grammarians who didn't know much about poetry or the Japanese language (grammar teachers love silly rules though, so they keep making their kids write in the 5-7-5 form.)

[flotsam]

Many, many peeps
have lost the light of this thread
BAD HAIKU dummkopfs

poemer is right
though, thank you, but godammit
read the thread title!

other people are
attempting good haiku and
that's nice, yeah, real nice

but they are only
supposed to be bad in jest
not really bad, dudes

everybody clear now?
great, take a look at these--Bu-
son Yosa puking

new senryu thread
in the works--what say you dear
Poemer? ready?

[Smee]

Avalon must be
really, really dull if you're
researching senryu.

[flotsam]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Well, well poemer,
Can you be more pedantic?
I can't imagine.


The championship
On this thread goes to venus--
Haiku Number Four.