Haiku and Thought
According to Michael R. Burch:
What are haiku? In Japanese hai means "unusual" and ku means "verse" or "strophe." So haiku are, literally, unusual verses. Sir George Sansom called haiku "little drops of poetic essence." Harold Henderson called them "meditations." I think of haiku as evocative snapshots constructed of words: the flash photography of literature. Another useful definition might be "transcendent images." For example:
Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt.
? Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
In the poem above, wilting autumn grasses and a braking locomotive grinding to a halt represent time, aging and the approach of death. Two simple images speak worlds, in the hands of a skilled poet.
While Japanese haiku have three lines with syllable counts of 5-7-5, this is not a hard-and-fast rule in English, so in my translations I have used as many syllables as seemed necessary to convey the images, feelings and meanings of the poems, as I grok them.
Jim Horn
I shouldn't be playing with things that I have no knowledge of up
to this point. At least, I have a little knowledge of it now.
I thought I knew it;
Had known it well;
Then it flew off into space.
Jim Horn
We are not sure and have doubts.
Then we become an egotist and expert.
Yet, still lose sight of who we are.
Jim Horn
We chop down others
That will build ourselves up
In our own eyes and not others.
Jim Horn
Is better to build each other up.
In forest, we can be tall together.
Until someone cuts us all down.
Jim Horn
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