I coo for Haiku

[andrewducker]

I've ended up writing a couple of haikus in different places recently. In one post ozarque asked for haiku about linguistics. I particularly like 2,3 and 6 (and will admit to a certain guilty pleasure in 4).

The map is not the
territory. Nor does the
menu taste like food.

===

Dictionary fun.
I trace meanings to their source.
Infinite Regress.

===

My speech is impure
Words plundered from everywhere
This gives it power

===

Someone says "Linguist".
My inner twelve-year-old asks
"But are they cunning?"

===

Precision's an end
Generality another
You can pull both ways

===

Verbing is, like, so
last week our verbal patterns
were drawn in the sand

===========

And a while back, hirez was talking about poststructuralism when easterbunny asked for an explanation of the difference between structuralism and poststructuralism in the form of a haiku. And how can one resist a challenge like that?

No space for authors
now, in this, our winter of
Infinite Regress

alternatively:

Modernism falls
like the outdated leaves of
discarded meaning

Comments

[andrewducker]

All of which largely goes to show that I rather liked the phrase "infinite regress" when I first heard it.

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

my dad writes entire emails in haiku. strange indeed.
isn't a haiku meant to be 5,7,5? it really bugs me with things like precision, as i'd have it being pre-cis-ion and generality as gen-er-al-ity. is it just my accent?

[andrewducker]

I've fixed it. Counting "Precision's" as three syllables now :->

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

yay :D

i like reading haiku games. i do get bothered by silly perfectionist things though. tis why i hardly ever create stuff myself. always *something* wrong with it.

[andrewducker]

I vary - I think it's important sometimes just to get things out and on the page.

[fannymagnate.livejournal.com]

Haiku are measured in morae, not syllables:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics)

Which pretty much means you have to write them in Japanese. Anything else is just a three line poem.

[andrewducker]

If you want to be ultra-traditionist, then yes. But as they've been written in English since the 1920s, Bengali, Urdu, Gujurati, etc.

Admittedly, most "Haiku" tend to be Senryu (gosh, I learn something every day, it seems), but such is life.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I wish I could have
one guilty pleasure in four:
Not a bad strike rate.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Having sentences that go over lines in Haiku seems to defeat the object of them. Also they have been done to death.

[andrewducker]

Saying that an artform has been done to death seems strange to me. Have books been done to death? Photographs?

And some of them are three separate chunks, some use the three-line structure for emphasis, and some ignore it entirely - this seems fine to me, and in keeping with the origins and different way that haiku are written in Japan.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Doesn't seem to be anything particularly artistic about people finding a sentence or two that add up to 17 syllables. It's like a poetry for beginners thing to me.

[andrewducker]

No more artistic than people pointing a camera at stuff and pressing a button. Or smearing paint on a flat surface.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I can't work out if you're trying to make a point or agreeing with me; photography can be art or it can just be taking a picture of something. I see a difference, just as I see a difference between painting a canvas and painting a house.

[andrewducker]

I'm making a point - photograph can be art, and so can haiku. It's the difference between saying something that happens to have 17 syllables in it, and saying something in that makes use of the format and produces an effect in the reader.

I'd say that the final one in my post is the latter, for instance. It's clearly not just a sentence.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Mostly I found the last one to be pretentious. I'm not expecting us to agree on "what is art" as frankly it is very much subjective. However, I think of Haiku as having been bastardized through it's overuse. I fail to see the beauty in playing the piano if that person is playing Chopsticks, for instance.

[andrewducker]

We'll have to disagree :->

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I thought we would, but I think it is one of those discussions with no "right" answer, just points to discuss.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

actually I liked the last one best - possibly because I agree with it:-)

for no. 4

[aliiis.livejournal.com]

argh argh argh argh argh
people ALWAYS do that joke
argh argh argh argh argh

/linguist :)

Re: for no. 4

[andrewducker]

Hence the "guilty" part :->

[aliiis.livejournal.com]

P.S. I think I like the first one the most perhaps. Mmmm Sapir-Whorfy.

[andrewducker]

Thank you :->