Haiku. It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way that You Do It

So Few Syllables, and So Few Lines

A few days ago, I read a Haiku someone posted online that they’d written. I remember liking it, but I wish I could remember where I’d seen it, or who it was by.

It would offer some contemporary context for this piece.

5–7–5

Regardless, the Haiku author had made reference to one of the great Japanese masters of the form, Basho.

Earlier this year I’d reread Basho, so it made me think about him again. About his writing, and about the poetic form he’s famous for.

About how it so often bears no relation to the form practised by most of us from the West, when we write what we call Haiku.

Three Lines

I’ve always found Basho simultaneously one of the easiest and one of the hardest poets to read. By the time I came to read his original Haiku (in the English translation, I must say, my Japanese is non-existent), I was already imprinted with set expectations about form.

As a Western reader and writer, I was expecting to open a book full of neat and tidy verses. All made up of a total of seventeen syllables, arranged in three strict lines, composed in turn of 5 syllables, 7 syllables and then ending with 5 syllables again.

This expectation has hampered my appreciation of his writing both times I’ve read this book.

I’ve still enjoyed reading Basho, but perhaps if I’d encountered him first, before the Westernised version of his art form, I might have appreciated him more.

Basho’s Haiku, at least to the unfamiliar or untrained eye, lacks consistency and, most importantly, the expected structure. Which will almost entirely be down to two factors.

Firstly, my lack of knowledge of Haiku, and secondly, the tragic loss of meaning or subtlety in translation.

I enjoy the Western 5–7–5 form, though, like the sonnet, those rules sometimes get broken. It’s that for Basho, those rules seem never to have existed.

Imitation might be a form of flattery, but it can also be a cause of confusion.