British Haiku Society [UK]:
this piercing cold -
in the bedroom, I have stepped
on my dead wife's comb
English haiku: Haiku originated in Japan, but latterly it has become popular in an increasing number of languages and countries. Yet virtually everywhere where haiku has established itself - and that includes Japan itself - you will find people hallmark it differently. Some see haiku mainly as a kind of poetry, a literary phenomenon. For others, it is a source of philosophical inspiration and in some way helpful to their chosen life style, possibly inspired by Zen. For others still, it is the specific genius of Japanese art that attracts. Readers/writers of haiku often share something of all three viewpoints.
Followers of haiku also debate whether the Japanese haiku experience (defined in socio-cultural, literary, linguistic and environmental terms) is too exotic to be assimilated by the West, and they argue about the validity of supposed Japanese 'rules' on how to make haiku - even though there has never been unanimity in Japan itself about such principles, and the view of haiku available to most people in the West is one clouded by translation and the mind-sets of those who did the translating.
These are the reasons why it is unlikely, either now or at any time in the future, that there will ever be an absolute consensus of what haiku means to the informed person.
This entry was posted by Ivy
on Monday, December 06, 2004 at 10:38 PM.
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At 2:48 AM,The Haiku, for me, is a form of spiritual insight locked onto something that is often a mundane aspect of common physical reality. As such, it belongs to no language, nation, race or culture. We are slavishly confused about form but there is much closer to some kind of agreement as to function.
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