A while ago I covered how many syllables a haiku should be. Read that here. Today I want to look at how many lines a haiku should be. 3? 5? 42? Curious?
This was on my mind because recently, @boxcarblue experimented by posting his haiku as one line. I love experiments and it was awesome that he did this!
Let's explore this topic for a little bit. Read on!
Haiku in Japan
In Japanese, a haiku is usually printed on a single line. Because of the syllabic nature of Japanese, we can divide it much easier as we read than we can in English. This is aided by special words called kireji ("Cutting words") that also help divide up the poem for us. These special words are especially important for gendai haiku, or haiku that don't follow a 5-7-5 count. And yes, there are plenty of haiku in Japan that don't follow the 5-7-5 structure.
In English we can't really divide up the poem visually or audibly as easily, making the line breaks somewhat more important.
Early Translations in English
Early translations in English mimicked the single line approach. Some later translators wrote two line translations: one line would be before the cutting word and one like after. This was kind of nice.
Here is an example of the two-line approach from Asataro Miyamori. He took Ryokan's haiku 盗人にとりのされし窓の月 (nusubito ni torinokosareshi mado no tsuki) which he translated as:
The moon at my window is left
Unspoken by the thief
(For comparison, I translated it into three lines here)
Later, a handful of translators began writing the English versions in three lines to mimic the three distinct phrases heard in Japanese when using the traditional 5-7-5 format. The most influential of these was probably R.H. Blyth, an Englishman who taught English in Japan and wrote several books introducing haiku and Zen to the West. It was Blyth who the Beat poets latched onto and who Alan Watts preferred. The combined popularity of the Beats and Watts probably had much to do both with Blyth's fame and with the popularity of writing haiku in three lines.
However, there were those who rebelled against this format. One, Peter Beilenson, published his translations as four lines. He also wrote the haiku in all caps, something that is less jarring in print than it is on the Internet WHERE WE TAKE IT FOR SCREAMING!
Here is an example of his style (minus the all caps), translating this haiku 年とらぬつもりなりしが鐘の鳴る(toshi toranu tsumori narishi ga kane no naru) from Jokun:
Ah! I intended
Never never
to grow old...
Listen: New Year's bell!
(Again, for comparison, I translated this into three lines here)
There were others who also embraced the four line format, but their number has grown much less over the years.
Modern Haiku in English, Translations and Original
Today almost all haiku in Japan continue to be written on a single line. In English both translations and original haiku almost always use three lines, though you can occasionally find the bold haijin (haiku poet) who doesn't stick to this format.
But does it need to be this way?
In English poetry, line breaks often give us pause. There is a slight hesitation. It makes us break
and consider
what we
just read.
This is exactly why they are used in haiku to mimic the natural break that the Japanese can hear but we can't in English.
So that is to say, a line break can be a useful tool in English poetry. One I think free-verse poets have been taking advantage of for a long time. It's also a tool we might take more advantage of in haiku as well.
English is not Japanese. That may seem obvious, but yet with haiku we are trying to copy a Japanese structure into English, a structure that doesn't fit our language. I covered this a little in my previous essay so I won't go into it too much. Suffice to say I think we should try to copy the feeling of haiku, but we don't necessarily need to be constrained by the format. This means a short verse, as short as possible (aim for one breath), ideally with a reference to nature and some kind of image juxtaposition. But it doesn't mean seventeen syllables or three lines.
How Many Lines Can We Go??
Let's use the example haiku I wrote for my previous essay.
evening
snow coming down
my son is snoring
That's not bad. We have a setting, a feeling (cold), and then cut to an unpleasant but somewhat adorable noise given who it is coming from. The line break after each line gives us a small pause. The change in images between the second and third line gives a slightly bigger pause, one I could help by sticking an em dash or colon at the end of that line, as some do.
What if I rewrote it line so:
evening
snow coming down
my son
is snoring
Well now... that changes it a little. Whether it is a good change or not is a matter of opinion and taste, but the change is there. Now, suddenly, we are shifting images to my son and spend a moment admiring him before—pause again—noticing he is making a rather unpleasant sound.
I think using line breaks is a very powerful tool in poetry, and we might consider using it to its full potential in haiku.
Final Word
There are of course sticklers out there who will insist haiku must be exactly seventeen syllables written in three lines of 5-7-5, and so we risk a small argument from this crowd if we publish haiku differently, but I think the potential artistic rewards far outweigh that risk.
What do you think?
(@owasco, you may be interested in this)
❦
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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
This! 👆
I miss writing haiku or poetry of any type, really. I think I need to read your posts more often to remind me how much I love this form of self expression.
.
.
.
Singapore
A land of eating,
drinking,
and endless shopping.
😉
We need more of your poetry!
Funnily enough, I am just about to do a haiku task with some Year 7s. They are writing a story, and then have to choose an element of the story to express in haiku, showing an understanding of character, setting and atmosphere.
They'll know about haiku, because it's a fun thing to do in earlier years. But it'll be my useful self to then challenge them and tell them what they know about haiku is probably limited, and rules are for breaking.
Line breaks are soooo magical.
That sounds like a great task! Is it kind of like how in Desolation Angels, Kerouac will throw in haiku randomly between the prose? I always loved that. I hope they have fun doing it. Haiku can be the perfect form for kids to dip into poetry.
That's kinda what I'm thinking but it won't end up that way haha. Yeah I love haiku in between prose! Kids enjoy the challenge. Can't wait to see how it turns out. I might even share some here.
It’s an interesting thing to think about and explore, sort of the old form vs content debate.
I actually think the two line format might capture the Japanese haiku the best, but using three lines and two line breaks for English haiku gives the writer a lot to play with.
I would even consider breaking your example poem into these lines,
evening snow
coming down
my son snoring
because I like the mischievous way that coming down can refer to the snow or an altered state, or maybe evening just an elevated emotion, etc.
I guess the important part is what works best with the poem, and what kind of meanings the writer wants the readers to access easily.
Another thing worth mentioning when you say that English is not Japanese is that following the 5-7-5 syllable format can really limit your choice of words and topics.
Say I want to write a poem about chrysanthemums. That’s four syllables right there, whereas in Japanese it would only be two (Kiku). Not to mention the need for particles in English, etc. etc.
I didn't even consider the double meaning of "coming down". Very good! We could play with formatting more.
evening snow
coming
down
my son snoring
So many possibilities!
It goes the other way too, right? Many Japanese words are 5 mora or more. Katatsumuri, for instance. Only one or two syllables in English, depending on the accent you are picturing as you write it ("snal" or "snA-ul"), but five morae, taking up the entire first or last clause.
In Japanese I kind of like the limit of 5-7-5. It makes it something of a puzzle and helps guide me in my word choice. If I were more fluent I may feel otherwise. But in English I find it far too constraining.
I hadn’t thought about words like katatsumori. 🤣
I haven’t ever tried to write haiku in Japanese, so I hadn’t really considered how the language might constrain the writer as it sometimes does in English.
Since reading this comment two days and being taken aback by the reformatting that you did of the poem about your son’s snoring, I’ve been looking at a lot of English haiku and finding all kinds of different formatting examples.
One that I particularly liked was a single line haiku that used a double or triple space between words to make a line break. I thought that was pretty clever.
dry leaves scattered across a road is there a pattern
Horror Haiku:
The sun is rising
bathing the party people
in rivers of blood
You should submit that to Blockchain Poets as a post 😃
Done!
https://hive.blog/hive-161465/@likedeeler/horror-haiku
Interesting. What is the Asian language that is printed up and down? Is it Japanese? How would that impact the writing of a Haiku?
Both Japanese and Chinese are printed from up to down, right to left.
However, there are many Japanese books that are like American books.
As @builderofcastles said, both Japanese and Chinese can be written vertically. Korean can too, as well as Mongolian and Manchu. There may be others but I'm far from an expert.
It doesn't really change things. All is the same, just different orientation. Newspapers are generally printed vertically, and the daily haiku with them, often in one line, the same as if it were horizontal.
Oh wow, that is cool.
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Yes I am interested in this! Excellent information! I have been wondering about all of this lately, especially after a recent conversation with none other than @boxcarblue himself. We discussed punctuation vs line breaks, and it got me to thinking about how many lines. I've seen that Japanese is often shown to us as single lines. Now I am curious about these cutting words. What makes a word a cutting word?
Love the difference in your two versions of the snoring poem. I'm gonna give this a whirl. A haiku could have 17 lines! lol that would be swell.
Very good! Thank you for tagging me! Much food for thought!
This is a wise approach as we're dealing with two entirely different languages and phonetic structures. Therefore, I wouldn't stick to the current paradigm that constraints our imagination and puts haiku in a 'format box'.
Very well this theme. For me, to write a haiku ins spanish is always difficult, but I have tried to do it. Thanks for the details.