This article, I do declare,
Makes a point that's as plain as it's fair.
Let's all call a truce
And end haiku use
Or else I might strangle a bear.
---------------
Now that that's out of the way...
I didn't agree with this, until it got to the limerick part. I don't have quite as much against haikus as the author, but in most (if not all) situations a limerick would get the job done so much better.
While I don't feel strongly about trivializing Haiku's grand traditions, I did find myself in the same shoes as the author. What always struck me about joke-haikus is that they're nothing more than a sentence with a couple line-breaks in it. A haiku should use minimal words to convey a story or invoke a shared memory or trigger your senses. The form is a part of the art: where and how you place the breaks is meaningful and should contribute to the feeling you want to convey. Instead, people think up a seventeen(-ish) syllable sentence and place the line-breaks as appropriate. Ugh.
mainly because a limerick is much more difficult to form correctly. A less than infinite number of monkeys could turn out a haiku in quick succession, a limerick on the other hand.
I fail to see how it's not a perfect analogy to say that this is just like a guy whining for an end to all internet meme images on the basis that photography has a long artistic tradition and should not be debased.
I get it that "joke haiku" are low-effort imitations of a noble and ancient art. So what? There's a place for low-effort dumb humor. That's okay. Your noble and ancient haiku are still there, unharmed. There is no poetry currency which is being devalued when cheap product floods the market.
I have eaten
the webpage
that was on
the server
and which
you were probably
hoping
to retrieve
Forgive me
it was juicy
and tart
on my tongue.
Similarly, I wish people would stop writing third-rate parodies. Swapping a few words out from a famous song or poem to make it relate to your chosen subject is also not a great artistic achievement.
> Swapping a few words out from a famous poems or song to make it relate to your chosen subject is also not a great artistic achievement.
It certainly can be, if the re-imagining and the juxtaposition created are creative and surprising enough. But of course usually they aren't. Sturgeon squared.
Imagine my distress, when I find that this is a lie:
This is a haiku,
Because this line has seven,
And this line has five.
So now I must update it:
Senryu is three lines,
Seventeen syllables max,
And knows no season.
You know, in barely related news, Dwarf Fortress now supports the invention and spread of poetic forms in the world generator. I'm sure that any one of those procedurally-generated forms would be acceptable for passing jokey-jokes around the Internet.
Haiku and senryu count morae, not syllables. The mora is a unit of timing; a short syllable is one mora and a long one is two morae. So 'tokyo', which is two syllables, is counted as 4 morae since both 'o's are long. Similarly, 'Nippon' is counted as 4 morae - 'ni-p-po-n'.
Confusion about this is why English haiku tend to be so long: compare
furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
to
wind catches lily
scatt'ring petals to the wind:
segmentation fault
Metrical-schmetrical
Internet commenters
Think writing haiku is
All fun and games.
Seventeen syllables,
Cutless and seasonless?
Pseudopoetical --
Let's call them names!
Now that that's out of the way...
I didn't agree with this, until it got to the limerick part. I don't have quite as much against haikus as the author, but in most (if not all) situations a limerick would get the job done so much better.