Writing & Reading Haiku

Lesson 4: Blyth and Western Haiku

Writing Exercise

It is perhaps the ultimate irony that, for a poetry so delicate and small, I have taken up the best part of 7,000 words to explain and we still have barely scraped the surface. With the reading of haiku, inevitably, comes the writing. I dare you to read a whole book of haiku without being tempted to write one yourself. It is a pleasure because it is pure pleasure, unadulterated by the need for form or patience. The glory of haiku is that they can, and should be, composed on the run, as the inspiration hits. Many poets, Basho among them, reworked and edited their poems to get to their very essence, but the thing itself, the original inspiration, was a fleeting moment.

At their best, haiku give us a real sense of that moment, straight from the writer’s life to our own. What a joy that the frog Basho - long-dead - saw, and still jumps today with as much speed and suddenness as it ever did. Many Western haiku writers appreciate this and put it into their poems. Their poems become a world in themselves, self-contained and eternal, where action is always occurring and images are forever in the present. This is the same, whether one is Japanese or Western.

We come here to my first apology in this course, for the use of the image of a firefly. Catching fireflies is not an easy thing. They are bright, they are ethereal, but they flit from your hand if you are not quick enough, and they are easily bruised. They are fleeting and delicate, they do not take kindly to being caught. Haiku should be like this, open to interpretation but always ready with something new. They are not, as Blyth may have given the impression, a wholly spiritual, airy verse that cannot stand change or evolution, and yet they do not fare well when treated as poetry that can be classified and contained within criticism.

Haiku poetry is a thing apart, unlike any other and should be treated on its own terms, rather than compared to Western poetry. They can be as bright and as complex and as, not only fireflies, but any stars they fly under.

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