Haiku

Haiku

Definition: (sometimes spelled hokku) is a Japanese poetic form that represents, in seventeen syllables, ordered into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, the poet's emotional or spiritual response to a natural object, scene, or season of the year. The strict form, which relies on the short, uniform, and unstressed syllabic structure of the Japanese language, is very difficult in English; most poets who attempt the haiku loosen the rule for the number and pattern of the syllables. The haiku greatly influenced Ezra Pound and other Imagists, who set out to reproduce both the brevity and the distinctiveness of the image in the Japanese original. Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" is a well-known instance of the haiku in the loosened English form; see this poem under imagism.