Less stinky...uh, stickler...in my old age

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I participate in a fun challenge called #HaikuSaturday. It was started on the platform formerly known as Twitter, but is played on other social media as well. I prefer to stick with Bluesky myself.

I don't just post a poem, either; I try to engage, too. I share, and sometimes reply to, the posts by friends and people who follow me. For those whom I'm not "friends" with, I Like at least one of their poem per Saturday (some of them crank them out like widgets, which rather makes me suspect that not as much thought has been put into each poem...more like dumping out the contents of a cupboard and calling it dinner than crafting a fine meal with fresh ingredients and care).

Anyway, while looking at other people's poems, I saw this indignant reply:

That skewed and rigid thinking is often found in those who are not of Japanese heritage trying to write haiku and asserting their (non) authority. I'll be the first to admit, I was rather militant like that, too, when I was younger and thought I knew better. (It's so true that the more you actually know, the more you realize you don't know...I suppose that is the anti-Dunning-Kruger-effect?)

But you know what? Many people who think they know haiku don't truly, aside from the 5-7-5 rule. According to the Poetry Foundation (and also Encyclopedia Britannica), "....the form originates from the Japanese hokku, or the opening section of a longer renga sequence. In this context, the hokku served to begin a longer poem by establishing a season, often with a pair of seasonal images."

While I still mentally count the syllable, these days, as I become better-read (and hopefully wiser in my old age), I remind myself that Japanese (like Chinese) words and syllables don't correspond to English ones and to stop being so damned rigid as though I'm on the autistic spectrum and can't help myself (my younger child is, so I know about all that; and if you also are and need to count syllables, you do you, my friend! I'm just side-eyeing the erroneously pedantic).

As Jun Fujita, a poet I greatly admire, wrote in 1922, "The so-called oriental influence in western literature today, I am afraid, is taking the form it has assumed in the other arts, which, to a great extent, have adopted the carcass of Japanese pictures and missed the essence."

If he could give us a word of advice today, I get the feeling he'd advise us to go with the spirit of the origin haiku--invoking seasons--rather than engage in bean counting.

For more about the looser haiku, check out this article on Medium.