Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Lets see now ...

尺八は
風の心だ
空の声

That's about the best I can do at work. Yes, I know, it breaks the rules of haiku in several ways. Please do let me know of any errors in my grammar as I'm very much still learning this.

尺八が
こん何難しい
知らなかった

I've seen some western haiku which conform to the 5:7:5 'rule' that have obviously been 'elaborated' to fit that scheme.

This is a pity, I think minimalism is closer to the spirit of haiku than set form. Some examples of this 5:7:5 'inhibitive formalism' can be seen in Richard Wright's English haiku for example (although others of his are just superb!)

I'm not sure where the 5:7:5 thing got its currency, but I know that some respected Western haiku poets consider it a latter day suggestion of convention, others consider it just a complete fallacy.

Regards,

H.

Last edited by Harry (2007-05-14 11:12:57)

"Japanese haiku have been traditionally composed in 5-7-5 syllables. When poets started writing English haiku in the 1950's, they adopted this 5-7-5 form, thinking it created a similar condition for English-language haiku. This style is what is generally considered "traditional" English haiku.

Over the years, however, most haiku poets in North America have become aware that 17 English syllables convey a great deal more information than 17 Japanese syllables, and have come to write haiku in fewer syllables, most often in three segments that follow a short-long-short pattern without a rigid structure. This style is called by some "free-form" haiku. In this essay, I will discuss the linguistic circumstances that necessitate shorter English haiku to be more loosely structured than Japanese haiku."

From:

http://www.ahapoetry.com/keirule.htm

Good article.

Regards,

Harry.

Come to think of it, shakuhachi haiku could be interesting. Take something like 3-phrase limit and try to play something that manages to convey a feeling within that limited amount of time. There could be other limitations such as - in the tradition of haiku - keeping the middle phrase longer than the first and the last phrases or perhaps playing the middle phrase in Kan while rest of it is in Otsu. Many honkyoku are quite long and contain tons of details. This kind of thing could be interesting because suddenly you don't have a whole lot of room to include everything.

I'll have to give this a try when I get home. Too bad my mic setup is still very much a work in progress and I can't record a whole lot of anything. If anyone feels up to the challenge, do post your sound clips here. I'd love to hear some of the results.

Mujitsu wrote:

haiku no cho

I'd say that's pretty great for the first entry. I presume that was a Taimu? Closer to 3 shaku or so? The decay especially sounds lovely. Ergh, I suppose that now that someone took this thing seriously I have to make one as well. I'll do my best to get something together in the next few days. In the meantime, I'm hoping for more entries. Would be nifty to get a tradition going here where everyone would post one or more of these.

ps.

I was afraid that the first entry would be someone doing circular breathing on Ro for an hour and then calling that one phrase.

Almost blowing tsu-meri

shakuhachi teacher

jumping up and down

— January 2008

Oh-oh, that is not sound of shakuhachi

Echoes though mist-veiled mountains
Old  hermit
Passing
water.

Last edited by TOTO (2008-01-28 21:38:20)