Can You Fake Haiku?
The writing of haiku seems to increase every time I look at international websites and magazines. It’s wonderful to see so many people practicing poetry, and investigating this special form. Yet much of the work posted—often asking for feedback—is much weaker than it needs to be. It is possible to build a better first draft.
The most obvious advice—and the advice most often given and presumably taken is to learn what haiku is, and to follow its rules, byways, and ethos. This is a good starting place. Learning about season words and syllabic counts and everything else that defines the genre is the necessary first step.
The second, also obvious, step, is to practice. However, as in any practice from singing to weight lifting to writing there are better and worse ways to do something—and haiku is no exception.
In my experience, genuine haiku needs to come from genuine experience. Like all poetry, it can’t be written out of superficial emotions, sentimentality, shallow wit, a desire to show off, or to look good.
Haiku in particular is based on moments of perception expressed in language.
The proliferation of cell phone haiga tends to dilute this. A picture of an iris and a three line poem about pretty purple flowers doesn’t really express much either poetically or visually. Haiku can seem easy to write—or close to impossible—depending on your level of practice.
Traditionally haiku can come from a sense of deep feeling, connection, loneliness, poverty, the ephemeral, a rush of passing scene, and more. Can you imitate such haiku and learn from them? It does seem possible. And that is because you may be passing through haiku moments without even realizing or noting them.
However, don’t make a fetish of the work of haiku masters. That person’s vision or intimacy is attainable by you as a writer—just that it has to now be yours.
Here is an example from Haiku of the day by my friend Elizabeth S. Lamb at Mann Library 11-25-18
the first fall of snow
even quieter, inside
the small adobe
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 
So helpful to have these reminders. Thank you!
Thanks for reading!
I like to write poetry and especially like haiku and some of the other Japanese styles, so I was most interested in today’s post. Some good points.
Thanks for reading–enjoy your continued writing.
An interesting account! I do like writing from genuine experience, but of course that’s because I like the autobiographical aspect of it. I can remember an incident years back if I read a haiku, whether I caught that incident or something else.
Of course the haikai poems before haiku, as written by Basho, Chiyo-ni, and Buson etc… weren’t often genuine experiences, but sometimes a tiny bit was tweaked, or a larger part, as in Basho’s Narrow Road to the Far North epic haibun. 😉
I definitely like to write in my own style, but have studied in depth the hokku and haikai verses by pre-Shiki era poets, as well as haiku poems from the 1890s onwards.
Elizabeth Searle Lamb was one of the first editors (Frogpond journal, Haiku Society of America) to publish me, and I remember her fondly for her own work and helping me on my own path.
warm regards,
Alan
co-founder, Call of the Page
President, United Haiku and Tanka Society
Hi Alan,
as always, enjoy your insights! By genuine I don’t mean autobiographical or objectively true–I mean depth of feeling/insight. I didn’t realize when I wrote this that genuine in the haiku context can be taken as “actually happened that exact way.” another reader mentioned this).Maybe because I’m primarily a memoirist and free verse writer I tend to include connection, intimacy, the imaginative as “genuine.” Poet Tony Hoagland called it “the true” in poetry–kind of like Keats. Also, since I can never get anyone in my family to agree on what is “true” I’ve given up on that!
Thanks again–appreciate the response.
I remember at a British Haiku Society residential event that three editors of different journals had someone send haiku about being inside a cage, at the same time I believe. One haiku said he was in a cage with a lion, another it was a panther, another it was a tiger. I’m sure he continued covering animals from around Africa and other places. It was so patently not ‘genuine’ on any level.
re:
“In my experience, genuine haiku needs to come from genuine experience. Like all poetry, it can’t be written out of superficial emotions, sentimentality, shallow wit, a desire to show off, or to look good.”
There is a lot of forced sentimentality, and phrasing that has become tropes alas. It is intriguing that surely most writers have lived a life that has genuine challenges and readers would be far more interested in those than attempting to appeal to a wrongly perceived audience.
re:
‘Maybe because I’m primarily a memoirist and free verse writer I tend to include connection, intimacy, the imaginative as “genuine.” ‘
Haiku, which has parallels with the verses that Basho, Issa, Chiyo-ni, Buson et all pre-Shiki wrote, has connections though, as it’s influenced by the renga and renku starting verses called hokku, and hence a link to each part of the verse, and then a shift. Haiku, both a genre of poetry and prose, even before we get to haibun can contain all of the above. 🙂
re:
‘Poet Tony Hoagland called it “the true” in poetry–kind of like Keats. Also, since I can never get anyone in my family to agree on what is “true” I’ve given up on that!”‘
Everything is post-truth now, no lies no truth, just results. We can but attempt to write haiku, with an eye on where it comes from, which is part Japan and part ‘The West’ which makes haiku ever evolving in itself and away from the poetry form called hokku which is ‘pure’ Japanese, or is that post-truth?
It’s up to every communicator, whether poetry, or other ways, to do what they do. Unlike a certain Mr MZ, poets hopefully won’t duck out of attempting something genuine. 🙂
warm regards,
Alan
Great remarks.
I’d love to write a short story about a haiku writer trapped in three different cages–haha.
It was fascinating that he felt he had to make up a story that didn’t really fit the genre he was trying to get into. A simple straight story could have worked. I guess it’s why Raymond Carver is still one of the greatest short story writers, because he lived those jobs and characters.