Poemranker [Replying] Sat May 04 15:19:57 PDT 2024

Replying to a comment on:

The breeze creeps with feet blistered by the now-dead frost, dampened on new grass.

20-Apr-04/12:58 PM

Haiku doesn't have to rhyme--it is unnecessary to the English version of the form. That said, repetition of sounds and words is not at all uncommon in anglicized haiku. Here's a translation on one of Issa's haiku by David G. Lanoue:

"First snowfall!"
and then, soon enough
three or four feet

There you have "three" and "feet". Issa himself also repeats the hell out of words. Do a search on "dewdrop" in this work sometime.

While we're on the subject, it's not technically rhyming, but, rather, a technique called assonance that is at work in grouping "breeze", "creeps", and "feet". It appears frequently in Old English poetry, but it has been used quite a lot since then by poets in this language.

The fact that English techniques get applied to Japanese forms is just the way things work. Our obsessive attention to counting syllables, in fact, is pretty much an English convention, since the whole syllable counting thing works differently in Japanese. Take a look at really good modern translations of Haiku, particularly by Robert Hass--he sticks with short-long-short rather than 5-7-5--it's just one of those accommodations that get made when you go from one language to another very different one, each with their own literary conventions and histories.

By the way, the "knees" thing just doesn't make any sense at all. And I won't even start on that roundeye bullshit, kid. That said, it isn't my strongest haiku; I totally admit that.

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