Haiku My Day

Poetry, Haiku Style: A Simple Way to Paint Pictures with Words

I use a diary app on my phone (Journey–Diary Journal) to write a haiku about my day as the last thing I do each night. I title each entry, Haiku My Day, and I enjoy this daily challenge. When I was in school, I hated it (like so many others) but now it’s one of my favorite forms of verse because of the simple format and forced focus. When I first taught it to my writer’s group, they groaned like I was one of the elementary teachers they remembered forcing this non-rhyming poetry on them as children–until the class was over. Then, they understood the following list of things writers can learn from creating haiku.

As a result of writing haiku…

• You will be more apt to notice, or be aware of, the present moment, (something important for every writer);
• You will realize the POET-ential (potential) of each moment for settings to be used in stories and articles.
• You can recapture some of the keen and vivid perception you had when you were young and everything was new and wonderful and worthy of further investigation, or at least of telling the world around you about. (Which is why we become writers in the first place, right?)
• You will have a heightened and deepened appreciation of life & nature, and how to paint them with word pictures.

Let’s begin with an answer to the question: What is haiku?

Haiku are Japanese in origin but have made their mark in American poetry where they traditionally consist of seventeen syllables, written in three lines that are usually divided into 5, 7 and 5 syllables, respectively. In Japanese haiku, there is always a nature theme. To express this, each haiku will use what is called a kigo (season word) to indicate the season in which the Haiku is taking place. For example, flowers & butterflies can indicate spring; snow & ice, winter; mosquitoes & lightning bugs, summer; and multicolored leaves, autumn. But in writing Americanized haiku, no topic is off limits.

Matsuo Basho, (1644-1694), considered the greatest master of this form of poetry, said the poet should write directly from his own experience and should try to seek the deeper, inner life of the subject or moment’s activity. He stated, “Learn of the pine from the pine: learn of the bamboo from the bamboo.” It is important to use your first impression, exactly as it was when you write about subjects taken from daily life.

Here’s a haiku I wrote the day I created the first lesson. For my examples, I’ll put the syllables in parentheses after each line. See if you can determine where I was while preparing.

…Quiet all around, (5)

…Just a whisper here and there; (7)

…People reading books. (5)

You likely figured out I was in a library. Now, here’s a set of haiku (called a renga) I wrote for the four seasons. See if you can figure out which season is represented by each.

…A cup of cocoa, (5)

…Flames blaze in a fireplace; (7)

…I am warmed inside. (5)

…New blossoms on trees, (5)

…Pink, white, purple, and yellow; (7)

…Generate new life. (5)

…The sidewalk is hot, (5)

…I do not have shoes to bear it; (7)

…I walk on the grass. (5)

…Feeding time is done, (5)

…The green has left the trees; (7)

…Look at the colors. (5)

I have plenty more, but now it’s your turn. Here are some suggested haiku exercises.

• Look around you right now and write one or more haiku about something you see. Think of it like playing twenty questions and answer some of the base questions. Then, see if someone else can figure out what you’ve written about.
• Write your own set of four three-line verses describing the four seasons.
• Think of two things that are opposites of each other: trust and fear; peace and war; rich and poor; tall and short; loud and quiet; hard and soft, etc. Now write a haiku that shows their differences. Try to get it into one three-line verse. Choose new opposites to write more verses. Here’s an example of an opposite haiku…

…Heat waves in the air, (5)

…Icicles aim for the ground; (7)

…Opposite seasons. (5)

• Think of two things that are like each other or that complement each other: faith and trust; peace and quiet; rage and violence; water and liquid; silk and satin; music and lyrics; etc. Write a haiku to draw attention to their similarities.
• Write about the most beautiful thing you can ever remember seeing. Make it visual enough for others to clearly see the same thing in their minds. If you’re tossed, don’t worry. Just write more than one haiku.

Try this form of writing to bring focus to a character or subject you may be struggling with. If you write a haiku you are willing to share, please comment on this post and let others see it. I’m excited to see what my readers might share.

August 10, 2016 Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | About Writing, Creativity, Nonfiction, Poetry | crystalwriter, haiku, haiku lesson, haiku poetry, how to haiku, poetry, poetry lesson, words, write, writing, writing instruction | Leave a comment