I never got the point of Haikus, to be honest. It just seems a weird meter with an unsatisfying, disconnected conclusion…
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I really hope this is a joke.
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I’m afraid not. If somebody were explain it to me, maybe I’d understand the purpose or the beauty, but I seem to be too stupid to get it on my own…
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I am reminded of the opening scene of “Dead Poets Society”, in which the Robin Williams character quotes to his class from a book of literary criticism, explaining that they should count the words, and the length of the words - and then goes on to describe this method of analysis as “excrement”.
I’m afraid any attempt to explain poetry is doomed to the same fate. It’s not something you can evaluate in a mechanistic or numerical way - you have to feel it, and that’s something you can’t teach.
Good poetry can stir feelings, emotions, ideas and concepts. It can make you think about things in a different way. It can surprise you with meanings you hadn’t expected.
Part of the art (and fun) of some forms of poetry is that they impose restrictions on the writer. It may be a requirement that certain lines rhyme, or that only certain numbers of syllables are allowed, or that only a certain number of lines are allowed.
It’s much harder to express a penetrating, insightful, or intriguing concept within these rules - and when someone manages it, it can be quite satisfying.
Can I explain this?? No, not a chance.
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A haiku is a traditional Japanese poem that has three lines and 17 syllables in total:
- First line: Five syllables
- Second line: Seven syllables
- Third line: Five syllables
Haiku poems are known for being short and sweet, and they often capture emotional responses to nature. They don’t have any specific meter or rhyming scheme, and they don’t require punctuation. However, there are some guidelines that writers can follow to improve their haiku:
- Avoid repeating words or ideas that have the same meaning. For example, “snowflakes” means “white”.
- Avoid adding unnecessary words to fill out the syllable count.
- Aim for a short-long-short rhythm.
- Avoid using unnecessary metaphors and similes. For example, don’t say “a blanket of snow”.
In recent years, some Westerners have experimented with different haiku patterns, such as 4-6-4. There’s also a simpler version called a lune, which doesn’t require syllable counting. In a lune, the first line has three words, the second line has five words, and the third line has three words.
Jedidiah lost
Unable to see the lure
A fish to be caught
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I concur. Haikus just never seem to do any of that for me 
Also, I do find meter extremely important in poetry. Might have to do with me being a drummer. Rythm is a language of its own. It’s not about counting words, it’s about coopting different parts of the brain. I guess it kicks in harder for some people than it does for others.
I… uhm… I feel I probably shouldn’t mention this, since it’s art and all, but… errr… looking at those Haikus above… oh, never mind. maybe english syllables just work differently from what I expect? 
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Thing is, poetry doesn’t have to rhyme. It doesn’t have to scan, and it doesn’t have to convey a deep meaning. It all depends on which set of rules you choose to apply.
Scottish Poem (Adrian Henri)
I’d never been struck very forcibly
By the hardness of hard-boiled eggs
Until someone pelted me with them
In a pub
In Scotland.
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Oh, I’m well aware of that. Rhyming is a very neat memetic device and I like it a lot, but I do know it’s not required. Some of the most impactful poems don’t rhyme, after all, and epic poems usually don’t bother.
However, the example you posted has a great rythm. It’s a bit broken up in the last two lines, but the pause required to make it fit basically inserts itself, guided by what has gone before. It’s really the major distinguishing property between poetry and prose for me. Prose is just words strung together. Poetry… flows, I guess? Like brook, or a river, or a damn landslide, doesn’t really matter. There’s motion inherent in the words.
I can see that property in Haikus, it’s just… They feel more like a pebble tumbling down a dry riverbed and coming to rest stuck in some awkward crevice where you’re not sure they intended to end up.
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You do realise that’s poetry? Actually, it’s pretty decent - especially considering English is not your first language.
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Oh, absolutely. I never said they weren’t. All I said was I don’t get them, they just don’t speak to me… 
Honestly, my brain forgets what my first language and second language is these days. Technically english would be my third (third-and-a-halfth counting swiss german), but it’s definitely the only one I command at the same level as my mother language (which is… a complicated concept in and of itself for german speaking Swiss, because while officially german is our mother language, it’s absolutely not the language our mothers speak, and the sorry excuse we have for “high” german frequently gets confused for Klingon by actual germans).
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I think you missed my meaning. I wasn’t talking about the haiku - I was talking about the sentence that you wrote. That’s poetry.
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See the description of a lune. I thought the same as you when I realized these haiku did not fit the traditional definition. Though I do think something may have been lost in translation or perhaps their English placed a syllable where there is none.
It seems, that for you, a haiku is simply not enough space for you to express yourself. You are disappointed in the start of the rock tumble if it fails to create the avalanche.
I like haiku because they express a lot with so little. They force me to picture in my mind what the writer was thinking or observing.
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Oh… ok, no, I hadn’t realised that. If I had intended that, I would’ve left out “dry” and “awkward”, that’d make for a much nicer rythm.
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Hmmm… that’s an interesting way to put it. I don’t think I need every poem to end in an avalanche, that would be its own kind of boring, but yeah, I guess I need some closure…
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This discussion about poetry & prose reminded me of a recent post by one of my favourite YouTube oddballs.
I found it an unexpectedly soothing mix of rambling prose, artistic imagery & snippets of comical oddness.
Make a cuppa. Settle into a comfy, quiet spot for 20 minutes and get taken on a thoughtful little journey.
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Ok. Living in an asteroid and choosing physical alterations to suit the world you are headed for…this sounds like the makings of a good RPG. Be…as the basis for the entire story
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Hey guys, I fell off the earth for a week because I got a collar cam for the cats and I have been obsessively trawling through and editing the footage coming back in a never ending fight of condensing the footage down to the best bits and saving on hard drive space '
(each hour excursion brings back 16gb of data).
I hope to have a cool video short montage of the best bits I gather over the coming weeks, but for now here’s something small.
I was visiting friends yesterday to go cinema (Alium Ronulus) and since they are the adoptive parents of Melfina (my cats daughter, my other cats sister) and Joey (her bro) just came back with footage of him failing to hunt a pigeon, I did a quick cut just focusing on the audio timeline, of all his attempts at mimcry, so I could play it and see if melfina has any reaction to it.
I figured you guys might get a kick out of it. When you cut out all the silence between his mimcry sounds, it just sounds like devious goblin laughter.
At the end, after failing to fool a pigeon, the magpies show up and he does what he always does, runs to his mom and hides in fear (he cannot mimic their shrieks; eternal foes)
I just cut this looking at the audiowave and chopping it at all the peaks, (for melfina purposes) so I didnt treat anything with warp stabilizers etc, apologies for the jarring cuts and shakiness, minimising the size of the playback screen will reduce any visual discomfort this can bring.
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I love the look the inside cat gives him when he returns.
Always wanted to do this with my cats but was concerned I would be too afraid to let them back out.
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That’s his mam, she’s always somewhere between disappointed and proud with him.
They’re usually collar free cos I’m worried the snap lock will fail them one day so I was anxious myself about the camera adding weight and making the collar more snag-able.
He doesn’t seem to mind it at all and from footage I’ve seen it doesn’t seem to cause any issues with his usual routes and habits.
The one thing I’ve seen so far that had me feeling this way was car related. A friend of my father’s was working a festival and left their car in our drive to keep an eye on it while they’re away from home last week.
Its got no under carriage below the engine, it’s some fancy convertible that’s probably nearing retirement age.
He climbed right up into the engine once he realised there was a gap.
He then went and checked every car on the road to see if it was similar, this was a new discovery to him I think? I had not seen this behaviour the previous days, he generally used them for cover when making his way about at night, but never looked up and pawed at the undersides.
When I was younger I used to hear about cats on my cousin’s farm dying all the time because they crawled onto my uncles engine at night for warmth and they wouldn’t wake up in time before he starts it again in the morning for work.
Happy to report no other car on the road has access to engine from undercarriage but still had me very anxious for a while after.
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