I just posted a few thoughts about haiku on my tumblr blog. It’s about my search for poets who write with real music that works to sharpen focus on the moment they describe.
- Kris
My somewhat lighthearted approach to the haiku master.
I just posted a few thoughts about haiku on my tumblr blog. It’s about my search for poets who write with real music that works to sharpen focus on the moment they describe.
- Kris
This doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive, but includes a few things that people might not be aware of. I welcome suggestions of other precedents for micropoetry, either in comments here or at the post.
The most maddening defense of Twitter is that it constitutes some form of art. Boosters like to claim that compressing communication into 140 characters results in a kind of computer-age poetry. “[Twitter users are] trying to describe their activities in a way that is interesting to others: the status update as a literary form,” writes Thompson in his NYT piece. Howard Lindzon, founder of StockTwits, recently told the Financial Times that the format “is an art form.”
So is speaking through burps. Again, any attempt to defend Tweets as some kind of new American haiku runs up against the reality of site. Here’s that great 21st century New York Twitter version of the haiku poet Basho, known as “aliglia”: “OMG, I want brownies! When are we having dinner again? :)”
I posted the above link in response to an Identica user who questioned haiku that doesn’t adhere to a strict 5-7-5 syllable count. If you write haiku in English or other European languages, what guides your choice of form?
