GT6 Haiku thread

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ProjectWHaT
This isn't a haiku. A haiku has 17 syllables, 5 in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the last.
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I don't care, just wanted to get my thoughts on this thread out. :)

NEVER try to ask me to write proper haiku. Your eyes will bleed. I'm much better at prose than any form of poetry. :)
 
ProjectWHaT
This isn't a haiku. A haiku has 17 syllables, 5 in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the last.
Click to expand...

Actually that's not the whole truth. For traditional haikus in Japanese it's true, but in English it's not that strict. The reason for that is that in Japanese there are (generally) more syllables per word, meaning that a 5-7-5 haiku in English would often get longer in terms of content than a 5-7-5 haiku in Japanese. The important part about a haiku is not that it's 5-7-5, the important part is that it's short and focused and in English it often means that a haiku of, say, 3-5-3 is more similar to a Japanese haiku than a 5-7-5.

Also, in modern Japanese haiku the 5-7-5 pattern is often dropped, and the importance is the spirit of the haiku rather than the actual numbers.

Edit: Example, from Wikipedia:

The best-known Japanese haiku[14] is Bashō's "old pond":

古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
ふるいけやかわずとびこむみずのおと (transliterated into 17 hiragana)
furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto (transliterated into romaji)
This separates into on as:

fu-ru-i-ke ya (5)
ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7)
mi-zu no o-to (5)
Translated:[15]

old pond . . .
a frog leaps in
water’s sound
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The translation to English is actually only 2-4-2. That's about half the lenght of the "required" 5-7-5, but adding more words would distort the nature of the haiku and make it more complex than it should be.
 
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