01 October 2007

Autumn Storm

overhead
withered leaves
rustling

6 comments:

John said...

I'm curious.

Does this count as haiku?

How rigid is the 5-7-5 meter?

(on a related note: If A Tale of Genji is any example, medieval Japanese people spoke almost entirely in haiku)

Qalmlea said...

I think it depends... At one point, I found an on-line haiku journal that seemed to ignore 5-7-5 entirely. And in the intro to a book of haiku, there was an (ancient) admonishment not to hold too rigidly to the syllabic conventions. If the poem only needed 6 syllables, only use 6; if it needed one extra, use one extra.

There's also a 3-5-3 convention sometimes used. In this case, it just didn't feel like it needed anything else, though.

Qalmlea said...

Not the same journal I remember, but here's a decent example:
Haiku Society

Qalmlea said...

Also, Simply Haiku.

Fibonacci said...

If a poem is translated from Japanese the syllable convention could be lost in the translation.

Qalmlea said...

True enough, but the links are to English-language journals, not translations. ^/^