Haikus

I was browsing WikiHow the other day when I stumbled across the article How to Write a Haiku Poem. It was interesting, since a lot of joke haikus are actually not haikus. People seem to always think haikus are easy to write since they need not rhyme and are quite short, but there's a lot of thought that goes into their making.

There were two specifics that caught my attention:

- A haiku, by definition, has a seasonal reference.
- A haiku must contain a cutting line, which splits the haiku into two parts of different meaning. This is the interesting part of the haiku that can be analyzed.

So I wrote 8, 2 for each season (they go in a cycle of spring, summer, etc.) and thought that the idea of haikus being different from what we think was interesting enough to share.

Raindrops’ soft glow
Pitter-patter and then flash!
Caught in still life

Walk through fields of gold
Grass gone dry with summer drought
Winds blow strongest there

Falling bright colours
Many leaves whipped from the trees
Pieces of culture

Cold and brittle ice
Clear like glass, quickly broken
Somewhat like our souls

Apple tree blossoms
Pretty but bitter, not sweet
Tell of fruits to come

Searing, blazing sun
Ball of fire in the blue sky
Burns worst in water

Brittle snap of leaves
Pass noisily underfoot
Tells my position

Footsteps in the snow
Tread once again by many
Yet seem as one trail

Don't they have to be 5 syllables in the first and last line and 7 syllables in the middle line?

Also, by "cutting line", do you mean something like these (Warning: probably not suitable for people under 13.)?

Otherwise, they're pretty cool.

All of them but the first are 5/7/5. I don't know what I was thinking for the first one, but I liked the image so I kept it.

As for the cutting line, no, not really.

Yeah, I was talking about the first one. I should've made that more obvious.

Anyway, I think there was a line in Romeo and Juliet that might be a cutting line:
"I will not be satisfied with Romeo till I behold him - dead -
Is my poor heart..."
Is that a cutting line?

These are really good!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ImmunityBow

Cold and brittle ice
Clear like glass, quickly broken
Somewhat like our souls

This one is my favorite.

The only issue I have with some of these are that haikus are traditionally supposed to be purely image poems. Lines like "Pieces of culture" and "Somewhat like our souls" don't really fit as they are metaphors/similes. Also, "Tell of fruits to come" speaks to the future, when haikus are meant to be in the present.

You have a good sense of flow, and despite those points all of these are really well composed. My favourite:

Quote:

Walk through fields of gold
Grass gone dry with summer drought
Winds blow strongest there

Cool, something else to keep in mind now. I wasn't aware there were even more conventions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ImmunityBow

Cool, something else to keep in mind now. I wasn't aware there were even more conventions.

You are probably the only person I know who likes having more rules in writing.

Nano's 50 000 words of no-rules writing had that effect on me. Rules are great! They give you more guidelines to work with, and you have to be creative within them, which is a heck of a lot easier than being creative without them. I'm also tired of a lot of the haikus I see flying around nowadays. They're more like limericks that are too lazy to rhyme than anything.

Haikus can be fun
But sometimes do not make sense
Refrigerator

Things like that. A little overdone by now, if you ask me.

I once played a game that had a level where everyone spoke in haiku. Proof. Jump to about 0:50, 5:00, 6:55, and 8:05.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ImmunityBow

Nano's 50 000 words of no-rules writing had that effect on me. Rules are great! They give you more guidelines to work with, and you have to be creative within them, which is a heck of a lot easier than being creative without them. I'm also tired of a lot of the haikus I see flying around nowadays. They're more like limericks that are too lazy to rhyme than anything.

That makes sense. It can help to know what you're going to do beforehand. Kind of like a coloring book: you've got to stay inside the lines, but no one said that you can't draw a zombie riding a dragon in the background.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrannigon64

I once played a game that had a level where everyone spoke in haiku.

Makes me think of an episode of Avatar where Sokka spoke in bad Haiku.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyndadile

Makes me think of an episode of Avatar where Sokka spoke in bad Haiku.

I don't remember that one.