the new school of houshold haiku

The academics tell me haiku has to be about nature and the four seasons – no overt man or man-things except by metaphoric extension. Yet as I read the greats I see they frequently break these rules —

Bashō (1644-1694) writes of drinking enough to go to sleep, of sleeping during the day, of an entire family standing around a grave . . .

Buson (1716-1783) muses how slow the day in the city goes, how lovely his lover’s “white fan” is, how cold wearing borrowed body armor can be . . .

Issa (1763-1827) talks of a priest giving a sermon at a crossroad . . .

Shiki (1867-1902) writes of looking back down the road just traveled and not seeing one recently met, of walking home in the dark after fireworks, of offering a ten year old boy to the temple, of noon naps.

Now maybe these are bad translations, but the old masters appear to violate the “rules” American academics have laid down for genuine American imitations of Japanese haiku. (My source for this is An Introduction To Haiku – An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Basho to Shiki by Harold E. Henderson, 1958).

So screw rules. Nature was important to the Japanese because that’s what they had back then. Nowadays we’re mostly an urban living household dwelling world, so I’m starting my own school – call it The New School of Household Haiku. We’ll include whatever sounds, sights, seekings, soothings, sorrows arise around the house and city as well as urban and modern philosophical ponderings. Nothing is excluded, as long as the 5-7-5 three-line syllable count is observed — and even the 17 syllables is but a suggestion because both the Japanese and Jack Kerouac used 17 syllables only as a starting point, not destination’s end. Do as can be done is the rule of my school.

Here are a few practice household haiku from my new school of use and you.

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Household Haiku

The cherry blossom
And the spoon on the table
Which is not haiku?

The moon is okay
But not a moon-faced old man?
How does this honor?

Outside my window
Strange sounds swish through the night
Metal beasts in heat

Black tea to rouse me
Beatnik tea to mellow out
This tea life I lead

The baseboard heater
Too much electricity
But heat is so nice

The silence sizzles
As the moon hangs over mind
Hear inner hollow

They say I can not
So I’m going to start the School
Of Household Haiku

Not haiku nature
But haiku around the house
Zen hid in shadow