Haikus / Senryu

Haikus are a form of Japanese poetry dating back to the 16th century. They were mainly used to describe  an aspect of Nature that the writer felt particularly strongly about.
Senryu have a similar structure to haiku but are based around humans and human emotions
Three of the most famous Haiku - style writers were:
Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694 ), Yosa Buson, (1716 - 1784 ) and Kobayashi Issa (1763 - 1827 ) .

Each haiku and senryu are comprised of only 3 lines with each line being a specific number of syllables in length

Line 1: 5 Syllables
Line 2: 7 Syllables
Line 3: 5 Syllables

The following is one of Matsuo Basho's famous haikus:

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!


Due to their history Senryu are perfect for breakup poems as below:

"Hello again." Click!
"Still love you." Click! "Please call." Click!
Do not hassle us!

As this excerpt from an article written by Karen Bellamy shows; haiku and senryu are perfect for "touchy-feely" writing:

"... Now whilst the haiku in its finest form is an exquisite piece of distilled art, you will find it is not too difficult to write haikus of a lesser standard that are still good to read. The 17 syllable limitation really helps when you have difficulty in writing 'feelings' because you have to discard the non-essential words and just focus on the really important ones ..."

For the full article: Journaling From The Heart With Haiku
For Karen's blog: Scraps Of Mind

Why bother with poetry?

Poetry is the expression of a thought, an idea, an emotion or a story in a particular way that has a flow and a rhythm created by the sounds and syllables in it.

As an acquaintance of mine (Mr. D. Siluk  Ed.D.) has written:
"First if you can write poetry well, you can write anything well, it is the highest form of writing, or is suppose to be. Second I repeated what I had said the first time, go check the bookstores, they got large sections of poetry. There is art and skill in poetry. And third or forth, poetry is a little story the author is telling you, and yes, they have to condense it, and most often go according to a style, and it can be often times only read by someone who has experience what you have, but then so is prose in a way, it is just that prose is smoother to read. And if you use a lot of adjectives, you might be getting into poetic prose and you don't even know it."
You can find the whole article here: Questions On Poetry(From the Smart Guys)

I like that first point "...if you can write poetry well, you can write anything well...".
Why? Simply because you have to think when composing poetry. You have to think about what you are trying to say, you have to think of the words that will carry the most "punch", you have to think of style, rhyme, rhythm, meter. Which leads me onto the second point he stated :" There is art and skill in poetry ". There sure is !

All types of poetry are often written in several styles. These styles are defined by the number of lines in each stanza or verse, the syllables used in each line or how rhyme is used and so on. Here is a list of the main styles of poetry that I'll be discussing over the next few days.

Limericks, Haikus and Cinquains:
These poems have one thing in common; they're short! Each of them is only three or five lines long. They are useful in getting the reader to use his imagination when he reads the lines. They can be funny, thought-provoking and/or even educational!

Couplets, Quatrains and Sonnets:
Couplets are the most popular and most widely used style of poetry where the verse (or stanza) is made up of 2 lines which rhyme with each other.
The Quatrain is a 4 line stanza where the 2nd and 4th line rhyme and have a similar syllable set-up.
The Sonnet is a stand alone 14 line poem usually made up of 3 quatrains and 1 couplet

Free Verse and Ballads:
Free Verse is as it sounds. It follows no rules (or possibly breaks them all!) when it comes to structure, rhyming or line length and is getting to be quite common with modern poets.
Ballads are an older style of writing poetry where the poem tells a story. They were usually sung and so they had a "verse" of 8-10 lines and a "chorus" or refrain of 5 lines where the last line was always repeated.

Epics, Iambic Pentameter:
Epics are seriously long poems that are very descriptive. Some of them are so long that they become books in their own right! "Beowulf" or Homer's "Iliad" are examples of epics.
Iambic Pentameter seems to be a fairly complicated way of writing poetry. Basically "iambic" means that there is a short syllable followed by a long syllable and the "pentameter" means that the short and long is repeated five times. It sounds difficult but once you see the examples you'll understand!

OK. Here endeth the first lesson!

John

P.S. If you know of anyone who would like to see their poetry online then ask them to leave a comment and I'll put them up on this site for free.