Haiku are really your own game. The strict traditional way is 5/7/5 mora, which isn't quite the same as syllables but is close. Also kigo and kireji. But there are also gendai haiku in Japan that are completely freestyle w/no count
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Hmmm … I’ll have to look up a few examples to get a better feel of it all. I’ve noticed you talk about gendai in your haiku posts, but since I wasn’t really connecting it to actually writing haiku, I guess that I didn’t really understand it on a deeper level.
Inspired by just being able to sort of Tweet a haiku, I wrote a couple more yesterday that put the counter syllable structure to use.
I’ll post another one soon.
It's all an interesting topic. My favorite haiku were by a fella names Santōka. If you think 17 mora in Japanese is short, Santōka would go even shorter. He was one of the first Gendai haiku poets and still one of the best examples.
I'll go look at the others you tweeted!
I just googled mora, but so far I haven’t read an explanation that makes sense to the point where I could look at a haiku written in Japanese and identify them.
A rhythmic unit based on length. 🤷♂️
It's one of those things you do develop a feel for. I've been reading haiku for so long that I can kind of just feel if it's a haiku, even if it doesn't hit the exact right count (such as with Santōka). It's kind of like in English when someone says something in a way that's a bit off and we get the feeling it might be a poem, or maybe a bit of Shakespeare verse, or maybe a song lyric. It just feels different than normal speech even if we can't articulate why. It's not necessarily a logical thing. But you can feel a difference. Haiku are the same.
Interesting.
I’m impressed that you kept reading after becoming a father. I think for me, that was the first thing to go, reading time.