a thought tugged at the corner
of my mind
PoemHunter Jan. 19 2013
Note: Yesterday, I posted a decades-old question -- what is a haiku? -- on To the Lighthouse: Is "War and Peace" a Haiku?
Here is an excerpt:
And if it [haiku] means something, then something else can clearly not be it…Defining American haiku is a slippery slope that ranges from the traditional Yuki Teikei (5-7-5, kigo, kireji) to “anything I call a haiku is a haiku”—the last being especially problematic in that it would require us to recognize War and Peace as a haiku if Tolstoy had so insisted.
-- Haiku's American Frontier by Paul Miller, Frogpond, 35.1, 2012
Hmm… what is a haiku? Before answering this important question, in my humble opinion, we as haiku practitioners should honestly answer the following two questions regarding the most-read haiku by Basho:
The old pond;
A frog jumps in --
The sound of the water.
Q1: How can there be significant meaning in this 3-LINE POEM which merely describes a frog jumping into an old pond?
Q2: If I replace “frog” with any other amphibian creature or any creature that can dive into a pond, is it still considered to be great? ”
Welcome to join the discussion
