Quote:

Hiaku is just bad
It doesn’t make a good poem
It’s not an art form
…………………………………………….




Bob,

Sometime I can't figure out where you're coming from. I get that you don't like haiku, okay? But you are protesting WAY too much here. You have gone a tremendous distance out of your way to protest--what? I'm not sure.

Saying that rules stifle creativity is like saying that uniforms stifle individuality, which anyone who has worn a uniform knows is not true. For a bluegrass musician to say that "he doesn't like rules" is a breathtaking statement of self unawareness--which I know isn't true, so I am really mystified. Unless you are playing completely arrhythmic, atonal noise (which could only arguably be called music) you live by musical rules. Not sure about the rest of your life.

You want rules? I was just going for syllabic structure. Here's Wikipedia's take on the history and structure of haiku. So many rules you wouldn't believe. All you have demonstrated is that you don't understand poetry in the much larger sense. To say that haiku is not an art form is not only laughable, it is a denial of more than a millennium of Japanese art and culture.

For everybody else, the jazz haiku earlier was brilliant. I'm going to try to live up to that.

R.


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."