Practical HaikuHow a tiny, ancient form of poetry can make your life better by making you more creative, a better writer, happier, nicer to be around, more productive, sexier …
by Dylan Tweney
Everybody knows how to write haiku, right?5 Haiku are easy7 But sometimes they don’t make sense5 Refrigerator
Rolf Nelson, threadless.com
Actually, it’s not so simpleThere’s a lot more to haiku than counting syllables.
On a withered boughA crow alone is perching;Autumn evening now. Basho, tr. Kenneth Yasuda
on a bare brancha crow landsautumn dusk Basho, tr. Jane Reichhold
But it’s a lot more fun!
sudden downpour – no one wins the wet-t-shirt contest
David Giacalone
How haiku helps you live betterHaiku helps you write more precisely
home addition– the carpenter's math penciled on drywall
Barry George
Haiku helps you seeThe message that precedes all others -- in art as well as life -- is simple: pay attention Harlan Ellison
Photo: GregHickman
Haiku teaches patience…Because you can’t always go out and make a haiku, you often have to wait for one to come to you.
Haiku helps you appreciate the small, wonderful things in lifeLike cherry petals, ants, spoons, blades of grass, peeling paint, nuts and bolts, dew, earlobes, discarded coins, scraps of paper, oil rainbows in puddles, snowflakes, stray wisps of hair …
Photo: Lily
The haiku way: How you can make it happen1. Read haiku every day
Daily Issa http://cat.xula.edu/issa/Mann Library, Cornell http://haiku.mannlib.cornell.edu/@dailykutinywords.com
The haiku way1. Read haiku every day2. Write haiku every day
The haiku way1. Read haiku every day2. Write haiku every day3. Be alert to haiku moments
morning news with the paper, I bring in a cherry petal
Dylan Tweney
Haiku Basics: Immediacy
Right here, right now. Lookit this!
Photo: Funkandjazz
Think smallMars landing --a tendril of red dust shifts from a footfall
Alan Summers
Photo: intherough
Show, don’t tell
in the old stablewe made hot, passionate lovelike wild horses do
anonymous horrible poet
stolen kisses barn swallows twitter in the eaves
Mike Farley
Contrast/comparison2 parts: short - long or long - short
the whoosh of steam from the espresso machine – frosty evening
Charles Trumbull
Use natural languageIf you can’t say it with a straight face, try again
“One breath poetry”
10-12 syllables is usually enough
in one breath the whole autumn
Valeria Simonova-Cecon
Look at the world as a “what's
wrong with this picture?” puzzlemannequin faces a cosmetic counter woman offers a spritz
Jeffrey Winke Photo: Lisa Brewster
Share your haiku with othersReadWritePoem.orgWorldHaikuReview.orgHaiku Poets of Northern California – hpnc.org
Or, just write haiku and send them to your friends, leave them tucked in library books, on Muni, scrawled on the bathroom wall…
Happy haiku-ing
hum of the laptop watching a lost world flicker to life
Dylan Tweney
@tinywords@dylan20