Facts about Haiku
The elements of the older hokku are considered by many to be essential to haiku as well, although they are not always included by modern writers of Japanese "free-form haiku" and of non-Japanese haiku.
Witty haiku, often satirizing the form itself, have appeared in popular adult cartoons on television, such as Beavis and Butt-Head and South Park.
Yasuda's theory includes the concept of a "haiku moment" which he said is based in personal experience and provides the motive for writing a haiku.
Many members of the international "haiku community" also got their first views of haiku from Blyth's books, including James W. Hackett, William J. Higginson, Anita Virgil, and Lee Gurga.
The impulse to write haiku in English in North America was probably given more of a push by two books that appeared in 1958 than by Blyth's books directly.
The challenge is to identify a “haiku moment,” a situation or a thought that represents a deeper feeling, then find the phrase that expresses it best.
After early Imagist interest in haiku, the genre drew less attention in English until after World War II, with the appearance of three influential volumes about Japanese haiku.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Shiki separated the opening verse from the linked form and applied the term "haiku" to it.
In 1949, with the publication in Japan of the first volume of Haiku, the four-volume work by Reginald Horace Blyth, haiku was introduced to the post-war world.
Haiku came into being when the opening verse of haikai no renga was made an independent poem at the end of the nineteenth century.
Poet Sonia Sanchez is also known for her unconventional blending of haiku and the blues musical genre.
Due to the various views and practices today, it is impossible to single out any current style or format or subject matter as definitive "haiku."
On the Macromedia Flash cartoon website, Homestar Runner, for Halloween 2004, the character of Strong Sad was featured at a booth reciting Halloween haiku.
Writing traditional hokku required a long period of learning and maturing, but contemporary haiku is often regarded as an "instant" form of brief verse that can be written by anyone from schoolchildren to professionals.
Shiki's innovative approach to haiku was carried on in Japan by his most prominent students, Hekigot? and Kyoshi.
Whereas old hokku avoided topics such as romance, sex, and overt violence; contemporary haiku often deals specifically with such themes.
Blyth did not foresee the appearance of original haiku in languages other than Japanese when he began writing on the topic, and he founded no school of verse.
The universal appeal of haiku is reflected in the ways in which it has been used in films and on the internet.
Today, artists have combined haiku with paintings, photographs and other art media.
The character King Bowser in the game “Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars” had his own haiku.
Henderson also welcomed correspondence, and when North Americans began publishing magazines devoted to haiku in English, he encouraged them.
Haiku was introduced to the West after World War II and has become a popular form of self-expression among both amateurs and professionals in many languages.
Onitsura would be far more famous today as a haiku writer contemporary with Bash?, if he, like Bash?, had gathered a group of disciples to carry on his teachings.
Earlier haiku poets added haiku to their paintings, but Basho is noted for creating haiga paintings as simple as the haiku itself.
Henderson translated every hokku and haiku into a rhymed tercet (a-b-a), whereas the Japanese originals never used rhyme.
Haiga began as haiku added to paintings, but included in Japan the calligraphic painting of haiku via brushstrokes, with the calligraphy adding to the power of the haiku.
Other Westerners, inspired by Blyth's translations, attempted original haiku in English, though again generally failing to understand the principles behind the verse form.
Haiga, the combination of haiku and art, is nearly as old as haiku itself.
The characters in one level of the Play Station game “Spyro: Year of the Dragon” speak exclusively in freestyle haiku.
Poets Gerald Vizenor, Gordon Henry, Jr., and Kimberley Blaeser, meanwhile, have connected the haiku form to the tradition of the Native American Anishinaabe tribe, stressing the essential interconnectedness of the human and natural "worlds."
Both haiku and hokku writers and verses, as well as a substantial volume of pseudo-haiku, can be found online, along with forums where both new and experienced poets learn, share, discuss, and freely criticize.
In 1949, with the publication in Japan of the first volume of Haiku, the four-volume work by Reginald Horace Blyth, haiku was introduced to the post-war world.
Richard Wright, known for his novel "Native Son," wrote some 4000 haiku in the last eighteen months of his life.
Finally, he discarded the term "hokku" and called his revised verse form "haiku," becoming the first haiku poet.
Nevertheless, these experimental verses expanded the popularity of haiku in English.
Many contemporary writers of haiku were introduced to the genre through his works.
The appeal of haiku is that it communicates a personal insight in a few evocative words.
Amiri Baraka recently authored a collection of what he calls "low coup," his own variant of the haiku form.
Haiku also makes an appearance in several video games and online games.
Today haiku is written in many languages, but the largest numbers of writers are still concentrated in Japan and in English-speaking countries.
Japanese hokku and haiku are traditionally printed in one vertical line, though in handwritten form they may be in any reasonable number of lines.
Contemporary haiku is often regarded as an "instant" form of brief verse that can be written by anyone from schoolchildren to professional poets.
The resulting verses, including those of the Beat period, were often little more than the brevity of the haiku form combined with current ideas of poetic content, or uninformed attempts at "Zen" poetry.