ghosts of tsushimas haiku mechanic has me thinking again about how fraught the notion of a haiku in english is, just like inherently

most common definition (i think) we come across for a haiku is: 3 line poem, 5-7-5 syllables per line, has a focus on nature / uses natural imagery.

obviously people follow rules differently, so please dont consider this to be all encompassing.

while technically we could construct a poem in english that meets all that criteria, i'm always hard pressed to consider that a haiku. mainly because the conception of syllables in english and japanese are just so so so different

the japanese alphabet is composed of kana. which each are a single syllable (usually, sometimes people cheat on dipthongs but who doesnt). so the play that occurs when restricting syllables has a different effect in Japanese than it does in english

following the rules of a haiku in english produces something, for sure. but since the languages just interact with these rules differently as a result of how they fundamentally differ in regards to syllables. its hard for me to say its even possible to write a haiku in english

we might be following the same rules. but the input is different. and how we interpret those rules is also different. because these two languages engage with syllables in distinct ways. so the products are going to be different.

which isnt a bad thing necessarily. the haiku is japanese in origin, so of course the focus is going to be on producing interesting poems in Japanese. There's nothing wrong with the fact that this form doesn't translate evenly into english. after all. the languages are different

but what trips me up is that, despite this, a lot of white writers hold on to the haiku as a title. and I wonder why? what does the haiku offer us in English that say, a triplet or something else can't?

it's hard to not come to the conclusion that we feel as if there is something "exotic" about the haiku. and by arguing that we can reproduce a haiku in English is more about maintaining that exoctiscism than it is about maintaining the haiku as form and what that form can produce

like a broken record. id like to again encourage people to read Edward Said.