![]() You don’t know who needs rest, or rest from what kind of work, till the last line sinks in. ![]() They themselves are something of a surprise. The cloud cover that comes and goes, obscuring the moon, isn’t the focus here, just the backdrop to the people who are looking at the moon. ![]() What does the poet’s discovery add to my perspective of our shared world? ![]() I want to know not only what the connection is, but why it matters. So if it doesn’t have to do with syllable count, what is a haiku? The best definition I’ve found is “a one-breath poem that discovers connection.” I’ve picked three of my favorites on which to test that definition. Can the poet capture something infinite within the bounds of so minimal a structure? Can he record a snapshot of a moment so precisely that the reader has, effectively, experienced the same micro-event? (Incidentally, in translation, it’s near impossible to reproduce the syllable count that the original Japanese uses, so translators try to reproduce the brevity, rather than the specific form.) Because a haiku is actually a challenge which almost nobody is up for. Just don’t say that to a Samurai, though. Is there a more misunderstood form of poetry than true haiku? People think: five syllables in the first line, seven in the middle, and five in the third, and you’re done! As though a haiku is a poem in the same way that pig-latin is a language. This misunderstood form of poetry can bring us from mellow contemplation to destruction in seconds.
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