User:Jan Pensa/haiku guide
As someone who can speak a decent bit of Japanese, I'm somewhat familiar with the Japanese style of haiku. Western haiku tend to only be about counting syllables, but the Japanese haiku format has more traits than just the 5-7-5 structure, giving it – in my opinion – more depth as a format.
On this page, I'll present a list of traits of Japanese haiku and explain how you can use them in your Toki Pona poetry. I'm not saying that this is the correct way to write haiku. My goal is only to present you with some options, and hopefully inspire some of you to play around with this. So pick and choose whichever traits you would like to incorporate in your own poetry. o musi pona!
I'll probably expand this page later, with some more actual examples and practical tips and such.
Anyway, let's begin.
A guide for haiku writing in Toki Pona (work in progress)
Syllables vs. moras
Japanese haiku don't count syllables but moras. In my opinion, Toki Pona and Japanese phonology are so similar that it feels weird to me to count syllables in Toki Pona haiku. But while I personally like moraic haiku more, I don't think there's anything wrong with syllabic haiku. They're both valid formats in their own right.
(In case you don't know, counting moras in Toki Pona just means that the -n at the end of a syllable is counted separately. So lo-n and ta-n count as 2 moras, i-n-sa and a-we-n count as 3, and si-n-pi-n and ke-pe-ke-n count as 4.)
If 17 moras (or syllables) feels too cramped, perhaps try writing a tanka, which has almost twice as many moras in a 5-7-5-7-7 structure. (see also § Related formats)
Traditional features of haiku
Beside the well-known 5-7-5 structure, requirements for Japanese haiku traditionally include a "cutting word" and a "seasonal word". Haiku are most often, but not necessarily, about nature.
Subject
A haiku usually aims to paint a picture of a single scene or moment that evokes feelings or impressions related to a specific time of the year. Many are also about changing seasons, describing something that reminds how a particular period of the year has started or ended.
Seasonal words
A "seasonal word" (Japanese: 季語 kigo) is a word that has a cultural association with one of the four seasons, indicating in which part of the year the poem takes place. These can be animals, flowers, fruits, weather patterns, human behavior, holidays, the name of the season or month itself, etc. See "Common kigo in Japanese haiku" on Wikipedia for some examples, or see "List of kigo" for an extensive list.
Some poets believe that it is more important that the poem conveys the atmosphere of a season than that it includes a specific seasonal word.[1] This is probably the easiest route to take in a Toki Pona haiku, because it's much harder to reference specific species of animals and plants or a specific weather pattern with just a few moras than in Japanese.
Some poets write "seasonless" haiku.[1] It's less common, but also definitely an option.
Cutting words
"Cutting words" (Japanese: 切れ字 kireji) are a group of Japanese particles and verb endings that mark a break in the poem. They are typically placed at the end of the first or second phrase to cut the poem into two sections (5-7 and 5, or 5 and 7-5), indicating that it consists of two semi-independent thoughts.[2] The poet Fukumoto Ichirō says that when these two thoughts are very far removed from each other but still have a thin connection, it makes for an interesting haiku.[3]
Use of cutting words is in decline in Japan,[3] and the aforementioned two-section structure can also be implied without a cutting word.
The cutting word may also be used at the very end, without "cutting" the poem in two parts, to emphasize a strong ending.
The strongest candidates for a cutting word in Toki Pona would likely be a and la. An a could work well to make a stronger separation before and after the cut, and a la is nice if you want a stronger connection. Using kin might also work, and maybe vocative o. I don't think that any other word in Toki Pona would work in this function.
Related formats
Tanka are closely related to haiku, and consist of a 5-7-5-7-7 structure, often divided into a 5-7-5 section and a 7-7 section. They do not traditionally require a seasonal word, and there may or may not be a "cut". There are tanka about nature, but other themes are also common, such as love, worries, family, or daily life.
Renga is a collaborative counterpart of tanka, where one person writes an 5-7-5 part, and another writes a 7-7 response. Many of the oldest haiku were originally written as the first part of a renga.
Senryū is a modern format that also tends to have a 5-7-5 structure, but shares little else in common with haiku. According to Japanese Wikipedia, they are written in a more colloquial style, and often involve word play. It is also not uncommon for a senryū to break the 5-7-5 structure, by having too many moras in a phrase, or by having words that cross phrase lines.