Poetry Friday

Haiku Moment

that grassy knoll
pigeons explode
into flight

--Kay Grimnes

Kay Grimnes is a Michigan poet who has published over 300 Haiku poems in various literary journals. This one appears in the March issue of The Heron's Nest, an online publication featuring some of the best Haiku being written today.

You'll notice the syllable count is not the traditional five-seven-five format. This is because that rule originated when all Haiku was written in Japanese. Once these poems are translated to English the syllable count changes, and in many cases decreases. The more progressive philosophy is that Haiku should ideally be shorter than seventeen syllables. Of course, this makes it even harder to write well, but that's kind of the point.

I like this poem because of the political subtext and powerful imagery it evokes. Kay also happens to be just one of the six talents in my critique group. So, yeah, I tried to write some Haiku myself (I mean, really, how hard can it be?) You'll notice I haven't posted any of my efforts here. . . .

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Haiku has a commentary tradition where people write about the emotions and thoughts a poem evokes for them. Here is commentary from the same issue Kay's poem is in.

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A word from Kay about the syllable count:

I think it is easier to say that modern haiku has moved away from the 5-7-5 pattern so useful to third grade syllable counting exercises. Because of differences between Japanese and English, the poems of closer to 12-14 (rather than 17 syllables) seem to match the intent of the Japanese form.