Practical Haiku How a tiny, ancient form of poetry can make your life better by making you more creative, a better writer, happier, nicer to be around, more productive, sexier …

by Dylan Tweney

Everybody knows how to write haiku, right? 5 Haiku are easy 7 But sometimes they don’t make sense 5 Refrigerator

Rolf Nelson, threadless.com

Actually, it’s not so simple There’s a lot more to haiku than counting syllables.

On a withered bough A crow alone is perching; Autumn evening now. Basho, tr. Kenneth Yasuda

on a bare branch a crow lands autumn dusk Basho, tr. Jane Reichhold

But it’s a lot more fun!

sudden downpour – no one wins the wet-t-shirt contest

David Giacalone

How haiku helps you live better Haiku helps you write more precisely

home addition– the carpenter's math penciled on drywall

Barry George

Haiku helps you see The message that precedes all others -- in art as well as life -- is simple: pay attention Harlan Ellison

Photo: GregHickman

Haiku teaches patience… Because you can’t always go out and make a haiku, you often have to wait for one to come to you.

Haiku helps you appreciate the small, wonderful things in life Like cherry petals, ants, spoons, blades of grass, peeling paint, nuts and bolts, dew, earlobes, discarded coins, scraps of paper, oil rainbows in puddles, snowflakes, stray wisps of hair …

Photo: Lily

The haiku way: How you can make it happen 1. Read haiku every day

Daily Issa http://cat.xula.edu/issa/ Mann Library, Cornell http://haiku.mannlib.cornell.edu/ @dailyku tinywords.com

The haiku way 1.  Read haiku every day 2.  Write haiku every day

The haiku way 1.  Read haiku every day 2.  Write haiku every day 3.  Be alert to haiku moments

morning news with the paper, I bring in a cherry petal

Dylan Tweney

Haiku Basics: Immediacy

Right here, right now. Lookit this!

Photo: Funkandjazz

Think small Mars landing -- a tendril of red dust shifts from a footfall

Alan Summers

Photo: intherough

Show, don’t tell in the old stable we made hot, passionate love like wild horses do

anonymous horrible poet

stolen kisses barn swallows twitter in the eaves

Mike Farley

Contrast/comparison 2 parts: short - long or long - short

the whoosh of steam from the espresso machine – frosty evening

Charles Trumbull

Use natural language If you can’t say it with a straight face, try again

“One breath poetry”

10-12 syllables is usually enough

in one breath the whole autumn

Valeria Simonova-Cecon

Look at the world as a “what's wrong with this picture?” puzzle

mannequin faces a cosmetic counter woman offers a spritz

Jeffrey Winke Photo: Lisa Brewster

Share your haiku with others ReadWritePoem.org WorldHaikuReview.org Haiku Poets of Northern California – hpnc.org

Or, just write haiku and send them to your friends, leave them tucked in library books, on Muni, scrawled on the bathroom wall…

Happy haiku-ing

hum of the laptop watching a lost world flicker to life

Dylan Tweney

dylan@tweney.com

@tinywords @dylan20