In observance of yesterday's National Poetry Day*, I here reprint an excerpt of an email I wrote today, in which I gave a very long, serious answer to a short, sarcastic question.
> How does a haiku work?
> H
OK, first things first.
A haiku is supposed to be a distillation of a mystic experience; it's a terse recapitulation of a miniature satori.
Part of the reason why they're so difficult to translate is that Japanese is a language in which every syllable has its own meaning -- that's why the syllable form "works" in Japanese differently than in English. But it is possible to write haiku in English that approximates the Japanese form.
The first line is short, only five syllables, and is supposed to capture a fleeting moment of a natural phenomenon. Somewhere in every classic haiku, there is a reference to a time of year. If a haiku is a sentence, then the first line is the subject; if a haiku is a narrative, the first line is the setting.
Thus, from one that I wrote:
"Flower beds at dawn..."
Or one from Basho, the "Shakespeare of haiku":
"It is autumn now... (Kono aki wa)"
The second line generally introduces some action, or a second element that relates to the first in an unexpected way. Typically, either the first or second line ends with a "cutting word" -- a dramatic pause for effect. The final syllable is traditionally also a pun that links the first and last lines -- because of that each-syllable-a-word quality of Japanese. This line would be the predicate of the haiku-sentence, or the plot of the haiku narrative. This is a line in which something happens, something changes.
From mine:
"Each bloom held in place by wire...."
From Basho:
"Why do I feel so old? (Nande toshi yoru)...."
The final line is very easy for us educated Westerners to think of as a Hegelian synthesis, but I'm not sure it is, really. It's a conclusion that connects a new image in an unexpected way to the first image, via the twist in the second line. In the haiku-sentence, this would be an object (but only sort of). In the haiku-narrative, it's the O. Henry/M. Night Shamalayan twisty conclusion. The impression, in classic Japanese, is of showing a transcendent connection between two otherwise separate phenomena.
So, from mine:
"...Shower curtains match."
from Basho:
"...a bird past the clouds (Kumo ni tori)."
It's pretty obvious that Basho's is about the gentle, wistful beauty of aging, while it's less obvious that mine is about Martha Stewart.
You can read more about Japanese poetic punning (kakekotobe) here: http://www.haigaonline.com/2004springpoemthispaintingviktor.html
... more about how haiku works here:
http://www.baetzler.de/poetry/lexa_haiku_def.html
...and do not miss this great explanation of haiku history, along with plenty of examples from the real masters:
http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/
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* Also in honor of National Poetry Day (and unrelated to anything Japanese), here's some poetic frippery & tomfoolishness that matches a poem to your mood.
It's goofy, but it works.
My match was one of my very favorite poems:
WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)