Types of Short Poems - Haiku

Short poetry is a favorite amongst many young authors, and why not? Poetry is a literature genre which encompasses a powerful set of tools set forth to explode emotion and bring about the best of authors.

One form of short poetry which young authors tend to love is haiku. Sadly, the haiku is often misrepresented by poets around the world. Many try to bring about their own definition to this type of short poetry. Again, sadly, this doesn't do justice to the poetic form. Nonetheless, whenever an artist tries to create art, it is fantastic. The world is definitely a better place with more art than less.

What is a haiku?

A haiku is a Japanese form of poem. In its original usage, it was an opening verse of haikai no renga, called a hokku. This opening verse consisted of a "cutting word" such as "ya" in Japanese (there is no English equivalent so normal punctuation such as a comma, colon, hyphen, etc are used), a word used to help the reader identify the season (actual names of seasons are often used, but words such as harvest, clouds, leaves, blossoms are as well), and a mora pattern of 5-7-5. A morae is not a syllable; it is a minimal unit of phonology used for timing and stress.

A mora is easy to find in many Asian languages, especially Japanese--where the equivalent is called "on." However, the English language is much more difficult when it comes to identifying morae.

Here are some general rules for morae:

The first consonant(s) of a syllable do not count as a mora. For example, the "d" in "dog" does not count as a mora.
The syllable nucleus counts as one mora in the case of a short vowel and two morae in a long vowel or diphthong. Consonants serving as the nuclei also count as one for short and two if long. For example, the "ai" in "tail" counts as two morae. Thus, the word has three morae. The "ai" and "l".
In the coda, a stressed syllable counts as a mora while unstressed syllables may or may not. There is no consensus thought on unstressed syllables in the coda.

A few examples of morae in words:

Jump = 2
Hello = 3
Cat = 2
Microscope = 8

Many people who write haiku claim the poetic form contains 5-7-5 syllables. However, this lengthens the poem an incredible amount, making the form much longer than it should be.

Here are the same words as before but as syllables instead of morae:

Jump = 1
Hello = 2
Cat = 1
Microscope = 3

Together, there are seven syllables but fifteen morae. Wow! What a difference. Over twice as many morae. This means, if these were used to create a haiku using the 5-7-5 syllable structure, the poems length would be at least twice as long. This is not what the original authors of haiku had intended.

If you are not comfortable counting morae, one school of thought for keeping the haiku a short length is to keep the poem under three seconds long while read. This will keep the poem roughly the same length, yet much easier for the English writer.

Next time you try to write a short poem, try writing it as haiku using morae. It will be an adventure and a great learning experience. If you have trouble counting the morae, just try to keep the poem under three seconds.

You may also wish to check out short poetry by Gary R. Hess or one of the many famous haiku poets.

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