Haiku Gratitude

The following was my guest contribution to J. I. Kleinberg’s “The Poetry Department” blog, posted 28 January 2024.

Every four years, participants in National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo) get a bonus, and it’s happening in 2024. That’s because this year is a leap year, so we’ll have 29 days this February instead of 28. NaHaiWriMo has been celebrated since 2010 every February—the shortest month for the shortest genre of poetry.

The goal is to write at least one haiku a day for each day of the month, so the challenge is slightly harder when it’s a leap year, because you have to (get to?) write one additional haiku. Some folks say it’s harder to do this than to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), held every November, where the goal is to draft a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. It can be harder because the discipline of distilling an observation down to just a single haiku is a challenge, but doing so consistently for the entire month is a deeper challenge.

For February, it’s important to write every day—you’ll miss out if write all your poems on the last day. Writing every day helps you develop a haiku habit, and it also deepens your daily awareness as you seek out things to write about freshly. Each haiku can be something to be thankful for, but even difficult subjects are part of what your haiku can acknowledge. To help participants on Facebook, the NaHaiWriMo page (which has nearly 4,000 followers) provides daily writing prompts, which appear year-round even though February is the official month.

How can you participate? Just commit yourself to writing at least one haiku a day during February and have a go! It’s more fun if you can share your poems, though, so challenge a friend to join you, or post your poems on your blog or on Facebook (use the #NaHaiWriMo hashtag if you like, which also works on Twitter/X and on Instagram), or post them to the NaHaiWriMo page on Facebook, whether you choose to follow the prompts or not. If you normally write longer poems, this exercise can jump-start your writing day, but the haiku you produce can have their own value and don’t need to be viewed just as stepping stones.

NaHaiWriMo is also an opportunity to learn more about haiku. Most of us were taught just to count syllables, but there’s so much more to it, such as employing a seasonal reference (kigo in Japanese) and giving the poem a two-part juxtapositional structure (equivalent to using a cutting word, or kireji in Japanese). It’s the relationship of these two parts that typically “make” the poem, usually with some sort of intuitive realization you get when you understand the relationship, whether subtle or more obvious. For example, here’s a poem of mine that won first place in the annual Henderson haiku contest sponsored by the Haiku Society of America:

meteor shower . . .

a gentle wave

wets our sandals

What does the first line have to do with the second and third? It’s easy to imagine yourself at a beach in August (when the Perseid meteor shower happens). You’re so busy looking up that you don’t notice that gentle wave at your feet. A deeper realization is that celestial objects (especially the moon) are what cause the tides, creating a sort of grand loop of realization—what you’re appreciating above you is also affecting what is below you. At the very least, I hope readers of this poem receive a feeling of peace and contentment and a sense of awe at the wonders of nature—nature that isn’t just observed and distant but also touching us intimately. I use objective description here to create a subjective effect, and this is much harder to sustain than most people seem to realize.

Haiku is indeed a chiefly objective poem, trusting images to bring about emotional effects in readers. By avoiding most judgment, analysis, and subjective conclusion in your haiku, you can learn to control what you say in any kind of writing. Knowing when to show rather than tell applies to haiku more deeply than any other kind of writing. This withholding also empowers readers to engage with the poem. Louise Glück once said that a good poem should summon ideas or feelings rather than impose them. So, if your haiku is too subjective or analytical, you impose your feelings on the reader rather than letting the reader have those feelings for themselves. As I say in my haiku workshops, don’t write about your feelings; instead, write about what caused your feelings.

If you’ve ever assumed that haiku was just 5-7-5 syllables, do yourself a favour and read “Becoming a Haiku Poet” and some of the other essays on the Further Reading page on my Graceguts website. This invitation goes double if you’ve ever taught or written about haiku and said it was 5-7-5. In Japanese they count sounds that differ from syllables (the word “haiku” itself is two syllables in English but counts as three sounds in Japanese). Consequently, despite how widely haiku is mistaught in English, a pattern of 5-7-5 syllables is actually a violation of the Japanese form rather than a preservation of it. And this emphasis on syllable counting too often obscures other targets for haiku that are more important.

A poem with 17 syllables in English can still be an effective haiku if it hits other targets, however (even though it will be long compared with a typical Japanese haiku). Here’s an example of mine:

tulip festival—

the colours of all the cars

in the parking lot

Tulips tell you it’s spring, the em dash marks the poem’s cut or turn (equivalent to the cutting word in Japanese), and the words are purely objective. I hope it’s clear from the poem that attending the tulip festival (this one at Roozengaarde near Mt. Vernon, Washington) made me more aware of the shape and colour of the cars. I hope there’s a feeling of wholeness and connection in this realization.

As Billy Collins once said, haiku poems frequently demonstrate existential gratitude. By practicing the art of haiku, whether for National Haiku Writing Month or not, you can not only hone your writing experience but also deepen your gratitude for life. And when it’s a leap year, as it is this year, you get one extra day to express your gratitude.