Today’s Resolution: Write a Haiku

Resolutions Posted by Amanda

A Haiku or /ˈhīˌko͞o/ is defined as “a poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.” I haven’t written a haiku since my creative writing class in college, and I’ve never been very good at them anyway, but I look at them as a fun sort of troubleshooting exercise.

Here’s a traditional haiku example from Bashao Matsuo:

An old silent pond…

A frog jumps into the pond,

splash! Silence again.

I don’t understand of the rules of the modern haiku, because I see untraditional oddly syllabl-ized haikus everywhere, but here’s an anonymous one from someone on Haiku.com going by the good ‘ol guidelines:

Laying in my bed,

staring at the closed curtains.

Should I rise or not?

Check out Haiku.com for inspiration and you’d better be sharing them in the comments, too!