PSA

[muckefuck]

I am officially declaring the haiku the most misunderstood and abused poetic form in the world.

I'm torn between simply accepting this with a sigh and stoicly moving on or taking up arms in futile battle against the forces of philistinery, homogenisation, and ignorance.

Comments

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Yes, the more I see of the state of haiku the more glad I am that my affections migrated to tanka long ago.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Same here! At least for traditional Japanese poetry. Among traditional Asian poetry overall, I think I prefer the Korean sijo.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Do what you can, but no heroic measures.

[alfaboy.livejournal.com]

what would be your strict requirements?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I don't have any strict requirements. I could give a list of genre conventions and then find an outstanding example that breaks all of them. One of my favourite features--and one of the most neglected in most so-called "haiku" I see--is the pivot word, an expression that can be read (at least) two different ways depending on which other words it's grouped with.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Philistinery
Homogenisation
And ignorance


…is practically a haiku already. Can you get a seasonal or nature reference that encapsulates the fragility of life into the remaining couple of syllables?

[jovianconsensus.livejournal.com]

A while ago, I read a great argument against joke haiku...(sound of googling)... here (http://www.phenry.org/junkdrawer/haiku/). Does it capture all of your objections, or did you have others?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, simply brilliant. I agree wholeheartedly with every syllable. I find his plea to restore the limerick particularly inspired. You have given me a weapon, jovianconsensus, a sturdily-constructed 2x4 with which to bludgeon every smarmy poetaster on the Web. I thank you. In fact, I will begin working on a limerick in your honour immediately.

Double dactyl him instead!

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

Doubledy Dactyly
Jovian'sensus-san
All who spread bad haiku
Wants them to pay

Call in the cops and their
Poeticlicensure -
Since they can't use it right -
Taken away.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I felt a great deal of resonance with his aside about free verse:

I've long lamented the way rhyme and meter have largely fallen into disuse in modern poetry, not because free verse is inherently inferior to the sonnet or other forms of rhymed, metered poetry--it isn't--but because it's convinced a lot of extremely untalented people that they can write poetry too. After all, how hard can it be to write 20 short lines that don't even have to rhyme?

Except that I even prefer bad free verse to the atrocious, rhyming, non-metered "poetry" that has become almost de rigueur at family milestone events. I tend to think of it as Bad Jewish Poetry-- for all I know, it's an American or English-speaking language-torture rather than specific to my people, but it sure seems to be concentrated there. (Adam on Average Joe raised the bar by setting one such poem to some sort of awful semi-singing.) I'm not entirely sure how it is that the culture that produced most of Tin Pan Alley became incapable of recognizing meter or rhythm, but it seems to be the case. (But it sure isn't free verse-- we'll make those lines rhyme whether they want to or not.)

Back when prilicla's sister was getting married, she was responsible for sending out the bachelorette party invitations. One of her sister's friends had composed the wording in this sort of verse. It drove me so up the wall that I recast the thing in rhymed iambic couplets just for my own relief. I won't claim brilliance, but at least it wasn't fingernails on a blackboard. (prilicla, valuing the small group dynamic over aesthetic considerations, sent out the invitations with the original wording.)

Huh. Apparently, people are now charging to write these sorts of poems. Words fail me. I can only observe that at least joke haiku are, well, jokes, rather than sincere expressions of emotion at significant events.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What I find even more painful is that the Seuss revival has led to attempts at Seussian verse in advertisements. Same disregard for meter, but with the added bonus of defiling precious childhood memories!

[alfaboy.livejournal.com]

pivot word... sounds like syntactic ambiguity in english poetry... pleasure derived from deferring as long as possible the reader's ability to resolve syntactical place. That shakespeare guy had it down... check out how "crooked eclipses" appears to be an adj modifying "nativity" followed by a verb, but quickly morphs into an adj modifying "eclipses," suddenly a noun.

Sonnet LX.

LIKE as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.