There is a lovely, newish book out by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Ted Rand, that is a collection of Haiku about animals. _If Not for the Cat_ is a delightful book, and I highly recommend it. I thought, though, that I'd post one of Prelutsky's haiku, and then craft one of my own and see if we can get a haiku thread going.

His:
If not for the cat,
And the scarcity of cheese,
I could be content.

Mine:
If you take a book now
and return it in four weeks
You won't pay fines.

(Sorry, I know mine is boring.) If you need a little refresher on the format of haiku, click here.

Yours isn't boring at all, CW.

Thanks for this thread. I received a book about Haiku for Hannukah from my assistant, and I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. You have stimulated me to do so!

I haven't really understood it, but if I recall, Jerry is good at it. Here is a thread we had on it awhile ago.

Your link did not work for me. The server seems to be down. "Traditional Japanese haiku consisted of three lines of 5, 7, and 5 units each, which are generally applied as syllables, and contained a special word — the kigo — that indicated the season in which the haiku was set. Some consider that a haiku must also combine two different images, be written in present tense, have a focus on description and have a pause (the kireji or "cutting word") at the end of either the first or second line. All such rules are based in the Japanese language and literary tradition and are habitually broken by most poets, especially when adapted for languages other than Japanese (where they can seem arbitrary)."

My favorite haiku, the first one I came across, is also the most famous Japanese haiku (written by Matsuo Bashō):

古池や
蛙飛び込む
水の音

furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

An old pond!
A frog jumps in —
the sound of water.

[Wikipedia]

quote:

which are generally applied as syllables, and contained a special word — the kigo — that indicated the season in which the haiku was set.

It's my understanding that all haikus should be about nature, is that the case? Yet, I met a Japanese physician at a meeting once, and he said that isn't the case. The others in the meeting were having fun writing haikus about medical information, and he and I chuckled at the lack of concern for syllables, etc. We thought their next step should be double dactyls!

OK - my first (non-traditional) haiku ever (unless I did some at school - can't remember now):

I like good haikus
I don't like rubbish haikus
Which one is this then?

The Honolulu Advertiser's Hawaii Haiku Editor liked the following contributions well enough to publish them a few years ago.

Background info: The ohi'a [oh-hee-AH] tree, with its gray scaly bark and small oval leaves grows prolifically in the rain forest. Its tennis-ball-size blossoms look like crimson pin cushions and are called "lehua" in Hawaiian language.

A pair of cardinals was brought to Hawaii from Kentucky in 1929. Now they are everywhere.

Driving along the coast road I spied an ohi'a tree with three lehua. I looked at the road ahead, then looked back at the tree ... and ...

Cock cardinal flying
From gray-green ohi'a leaves
One less lehua

World sugar prices sank so low that sugar production in Hawaii ceased. But "volunteer," or "wild" sugarcane still flourishes alongside the highway near the town of Pahoa. The cane grows to ten feet, and in mid-November each
plant grows a flowering stalk some two feet tall. In full bloom the cone-shaped stalks resemble tinsel. They fade out in mid-January.

... and ... so ....

Pahoa winter
Tall tinsel-tinted tassels
Sugarcane in bloom!

~~~ jerry

So tired am I
nodding my head in my chair
posting just one more.