by Neal Whitman

Created on: August 28, 2009

Put That Book Down and Walk Back Slowly

If you do not write haiku or do not want to learn how to write haiku, put that book down. Cor van der Heuvel's "The Haiku Anthology," is not for you. There is only one reason to read "Over 800 of the Best English Language Haiku and Related Works.. : TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE IT. There is no other reason to peruse, never mind read, 300 pages of English language haiku. There is too much of it available for free on the Intenet. But if you want to write it, there are well, let's put it this way.There are only two ways to learn how to write any kind of poetry:(1) Read. (2) Write. This book is perhaps the best possible text to help you learn to write by reading. Oh, like the non-reader, you could look for it on the Internet. But, you want to be sure to read good haiku and here Cor van der Heuvel has culled much that is good and little that is not.

The haiku aspirant might consider instead reading "The Classics," that is Masters just as Basho, Buson, and Issa. The problem with learning how to write haiku in English is that Japanese haiku, as translated, may not longer be good haiku. Plus, much of it made use of the "kigo," those seasonal words aimed as giving an "ahness" of a time of the year. The problem here is that the climate zone you live in may have little in common with Japanese seasons, never mine cultural symbols such as the iguisi, a little bush warbler whose song says to the Japanese sensibility, "Hey, it's spring." And, consider this: a 17th or 18th century poet lived in a world when towns were not lit by electricity. Night, especially on a new moon was dark really dark.

So, to get a sense of what is haiku by reading it, read what was written first in English and written in a World you know. What Cor offers the writer and would-be writer are examples of haiku that demonstrate, first of all, that the 3-line, 5-7-5 syllable count, as taught by your high school English teacher way-back-when, is kaput. He explains in his excellent Introduction, that the Japanese haikuists were counting sound units, not syllables. So, for example, the city of Tokyo, which in English we pronounce in 3 syllables, is said with 4 sound units in Japanese. So, the 5-7-5 count in English yields haiku that are too long. In addition, we learn that the 3-line structure is not The Law. In fact, Cor once published a one line haiku. Buckle your seatbelt. It was one word. Tundra. That's it. Tundra.

So, I implore. Write haiku. Go ahead. Write it. And to learn how? Read haiku. Read contemporary haiku written by contemporary writers whose world you share. Make this collection, selected by a contemporary master your teacher. No, not to copy. The aim of this book is to help you see what is possible. Your job? The impossible. Share an experience so that reader can see (or hear, touch, smell, taste, feel) what you saw AND without telling us what it was, to feel the same feeling.

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