20 Days of Haiku
Haiku is a form of poetry that appeals to me in significant and growing ways: they are the right size for an impatient poet (at least that’s a good way to fool me into picking up a pen … I can spend a good long time working on the shortest poems); they have strict formal requirements(but see below) within which the writer has complete freedom of subject and word-choice; they align with my current professional goal of saying meaningful things very efficiently and in a very small space.
While haiku don’t have to follow any rules to be good, and there’s no consensus on how to translate ancient rules of haiku into English, I decided to follow a strict, traditional, western syllable limit for the poems, that is 5-7-5.
These are the best of a recent prolific period. After writing a few poems a year for years, I recently picked up a paper notebook, and wrote 30 haiku in about 20 days.