[Lee Gurga]

Kathy, delighted we were able to give you a stimulating surprise! Thanks for sharing the haiku. (By the way, "haiku " is both singular and plural.) They give me an opportunity to comment on several issues related to haiku composition. I hope you find them of interest. And even more I hope you won't mind my using your poems to discuss them.

I will begin this by sharing the secret of writing a fine haiku. Interested? Here's the secret: write 100 bad haiku! You may think I am being glib, but the fact is that it is very difficult to write an excellent haiku. And this is not only a problem for Westerners. The Japanese say that even for a haiku master, only one in ten is excellent. With this perspective, let’s go on to see what we can learn from your haiku.

In an earlier post, in which we discussed some haiku of Janet Kenny’s, I mentioned that what seemed to be the context of the poem was presented in the third line. This is a common problem for those who are first trying their hands at haiku. Sort of “saving up” a surprise to present in the third line. A related problem is that of making the third line a “conclusion” or “title” to the poem. In other words, rather than presenting two images, haiku like this present one image and the poet's interpretation of the image. If your haiku can be rewritten like this:

"bachelor"

bullfrog croaks
never gets answer

it likely suffers from this affliction. In general, haiku don’t have a “point” to make. Rather, they offer to share a meaningful intuition with ther reader by artfully presenting images in such a way that the reader can become a “co-creator” of the experience.

Your haiku also bring to mind another pitfall of writing haiku, what has been referred to as “Tontoism” after the Lone Ranger's faithful companion. It is considered Tontoism when one unnaturally omits articles from the haiku. (In my mind “never gets answer” and “on ground in circle” are both examples of this.) I don’t think anyone would arbitrarily leave out articles when writing a sonnet; there is no reason to do so when writing a haiku, either.

Another important issue of haiku is what I will refer to as “believability.” When something is being presented as a natural scene, is it plausible or not? (Of course, this issue takes on a completely different aspect when one is talking about surreal haiku or haiku that rely on syntactic disjunction to jar the reader.) I don’t pretend to be an expert on luna moths, but when I read the luna moth haiku, I suspect it is based on fancy rather than on what luna moths actually do. (If I am wrong about this, give me both barrels! Blam! Blam!) Even if I am wrong about this particular poem, and please forgive me if I am, the issue still remains important for poets writing haiku. The best haiku are about WHAT IS rather than on the poet's fancy or what things are like or might seem like. (This is the reason overtly figurative language is generally avoided in haiku.) Of course, there are execeptions, and “what is truth” is not a trivial issue. In fact, it may well be the most important. Having read that last sentence, you might suspect another lecture is coming on. I will try to restrain myself and just mention another perspective from which to look at this issue: in one schema, the development of the haiku poet’s sensibilities is seen as moving on a continuum from “sketches from life” to “selective realism” to “poetic truth.” Poetic truth, of course, is not the same as literal truth. (If you are interested in hearing more about this, let me know and I won't have to feel guilty about giving another lecture.)

See what you have done, Kathy? I hope you won’t think that I am being too hard on you and I hope you will not be discouraged from sharing more of your haiku with us!

Lee