hiaku by Kurt Bauschardt
This isn’t haiku.
You’re simply breaking statements
into syllables.
Haiku is image,
quick, concrete, a captured bird
released to paper.
Kerouac
said English needs less
syllables
to give forms
life, while Japanese
requires more.
Kerouac
-an awful poet-
true this once:
sharpen words
to draw rare birds in.
Work to pare.
These aren’t haiku.
Just quick instructions broken
into syllables.
It’s relatively easy to write a silly, or downright bad, haiku, and Missed Connections certainly had it share of them. I don’t remember seeing, and I clearly didn’t save, the original haiku this writer is referring to. Their response, on the other hand, was certainly worth holding on to.
