I can't write haikus.
They are just really random!
Why are they like that?
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
I mean...I liked it, but there isn't much to say. This did fit the haiku form perfectly (yes, I counted the syllables, lol). So that's good?
However, I disagree that haikus are 'just really random'--they're my favorite form of poetry, and I think they can be very meaningful.
Overall, the piece was good, but doesn't leave much substance to actually review. Maybe it's not your poem that's the problem--I think it's just generally harder to review short works....
Haha, nice one. But the thing is, this can't really count as a haiku, because from what I know, haiku are supposed to be about some SOLID subject, like nature, or something other. And another thing: The plural of haiku is HAIKU. Soo..............
Unless you didn't mean this to be a haiku at all? Then it's okay.
Keep it up!
Mysticalxx
Hi!
There is literally not much to say.Haikus are interesting. I should really like to learn how to write them. I bet that would be fun. The only thing I will point out is the second line. It has 7 beats, while the other two have 5 beats. Other than that, good job.
Good luck and keep writing!
Very truly yours,
fantasydragon01.
Haha this made me laugh. Cause I can't write haikus for anything either.
But it's funny
you did write a haiku even though you said you can't aha.
@Kyllorac
@carbonCore
WEABOOS
Oh Porky-senpai, you're such a baka!
You can't be a weaboo when you're half Japanese you dork.
@carbonCore
Idiot > Weeb
Don't ask me why; it's just math.
@Kyllorac
That's like saying I'm half-Yoda. Are or are not -- there is no half.
You would be half-Yoda if Yoda were your father. Which he clearly is not.
Drive-by review to say that this isn't an oxymoronic haiku because it isn't a haiku at all! Haiku are specifically about nature, and there's a lot of subtle structural aspects of them (such as season words or a cut) which need to be present for it to be considered a haiku, which also generally aren't taught in schools when they cover haiku. Which is just tragic, because in addition to categorizing poetry by the form, Japanese poetry is further divided by topic and vocabulary.
Anyways, what you have here is almost a senryuu, which is a poem with a similar basic structure to a haiku, but instead of being about nature, it's about the foibles of human nature, in this case, about your inability to write haiku. It would probably be classified as a zappai, another form of poetry that is superficially similar to haiku, since the main subject of the poem is haiku themselves, and how random they are.
So, long rambling story about Japanese poetic forms short, what you have here is a non-oxymoronic zappai. Congratulations!
On a different note, the plural form of "haiku" is "haiku". There are no plural forms in Japanese (at least, not in the same way words are pluralized in English), and since haiku is a recent loanword, the singular and plural forms are the same in English too.
The second line also reads as very stilted because of the lack of contraction, and it's very obvious that you split "they're" into "they are" to meet the syllable requirement. I'm also not really a fan of the exclamation mark at the end. It feels like forced enthusiasm, especially considering it's followed up by the question in the third line, and the simplicity of the language doesn't really help the effect.
I think this piece would be much improved if you found a way to describe the randomness of haiku (which I'm not even sure what you're talking about there) in the second line. At the very least, it would strengthen the impact of the question in the third line and reinforce why the narrator can't write haiku.
Alright. Thank you!
I will try to answer the question to the best of my ability.
Haiku is a form of short poetry originally written by poets inspired by nature. At its core, haiku usually consists of two images that somehow interact or contrast against one another. The short of what I'm about to write, and the direct answer to your question, is this: haiku may appear random because the relationship between the images is purposely left unexplained, leaving the reader to try and figure it out themselves. If the haiku was not clear enough about the implied relationship, or if the reader was otherwise unable to find it, a haiku may indeed appear to be disjointed and random. Now, for the long of it.
For me, the pleasure of reading haiku comes from that mechanic of making the connection myself. For the strongest haiku, the connection comes immediately. Consider the following:
This marks the haiku which made me fall in love with the art form. Gosh, we have this beautiful bowl, but we're all out of rice. We're starving, we've got no other food, but we can't let this gorgeous thing sit sad and empty! Let's put some flowers in it, liven up the place.
This is the kind of poem which makes me happy to be alive. It's so positive, it's so optimistic! It doesn't dwell on the family's hunger, it only wants to make the best of what they've already got. You can probably see the contrast: an empty rice bowl, and flowers, which don't usually go into rice bowls. The interaction between these two images doesn't simply show flowers in a bowl, it shows how the poet felt about life itself, which is a lot to fit into seventeen syllables.
This one was translated to preserve as much of its meaning from Japanese as possible, without adhering to the 5-7-5 format:
Scissors and a chrysanthemum. Scissors and a beautiful flower you've just spent the last several months nursing to blossom. Of course, when you look at it, you see those several months of concern at the lack of a green shoot, of surprise when it finally bites through the earth, of joy at a green bud at the top, of awe at the beautiful flower when it finally hatches. How could you do it? But, your hand hesitates only for a moment. In the end, the beautiful flower falls down, to ensure the plant will bloom again next year, and doesn't spend all its resources on one gorgeous flower. Try and feel it: what would you feel like, if it was your hand there? If it was your flower? Can you feel the hesitation? Does that moment when you have to finally do it cut you also, just like it cut the stem?
Here's one that I too at first thought was random and overrated, that took me a long time to get:
Imagine this ancient pond here. It's old! Way older than you or me, or even our parents or grandparents. It feels shallow but also dark enough that you can't see in it -- something can't be so ancient without keeping more than a few secrets. The water is as still as a mirror, and you can see by the exact line it's left on the rocks sticking out that it's been like this for a long time. It's had its days as a rain and a creek when it was young and spry, it doesn't want to move anymore -- it's old, it loves to rest and sleep. Here's this old, ancient pond.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a frog! Splash! Droplets fly and land on the leaves of overhanging plants! The pond ripples, disturbed from its sleep, this old, mirror-like water is roused into motion! Dark silt rises into little water-clouds from its bottom, plant branches shiver, previously unseen fishes dart out from under big lily-pads! Like a grumpy old man, the pond swishes for a bit before resting again and falling asleep. Can you imagine yourself in his place? Can you feel his annoyance at the youth trampling his grass, so to speak, his quickly fading ire at the young troublemaker? Can you see the clueless expression of the frog, who has no idea nor care that he had just disturbed something so ancient and tired?
I will put a like on this work. Not because I like the work itself -- in fact, I was quite upset at first, as I enjoy this art form and I felt you were mocking it -- but because, if you truly want to find out what haiku is like, it is a cause I can appreciate. If you've taken the time to find the basics of the 5-7-5 structure and thought about it long enough to know that you didn't understand it, then asked a question to that end -- goodness, I really couldn't ask for more. I can only hope I answered the question well.
If I hadn't I'll leave you with a snippet of a work about a haiku that whetted my own interest in it before I became really fond of them (Japan by Billy Collins):
Spoiler
Your servant,
cC
holy......goodness... lol
Thanks!