How to Write Haiku the Easy Way!
So, you want to write a haiku poem? Some think it’s very easy to do. After all, it’s only 3 short lines. But if you want to write a haiku, you need to know the basics. Let’s get started!
First of all, forget about the 5-7-5 syllable rule. Modern haiku poets here in the west rarely use it. The Japanese used it because their language somehow fit it quite nicely. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to think about how to fit what we want to say into a certain number of syllables.
What’s important when writing a haiku is to understand the haiku spirit and basically, this really has to do with looking at things in nature with reverence. To understand that the beating wings of a humming bird is a small miracle itself is to begin to understand haiku for it seeks to capture the “small” things and make them big.
Now we can look at a certain technique I like to call macro-micro technique. Basically, this is when the first part of the haiku poem, the fragment, takes a macro view of the world. For instance, if we begin a haiku with something like this: “winter twilight,” we’ve established the background or mood of the haiku… the macro view.