5-7-5 to Slabsville
You see, for decades 5-7-5 has been used as an early school teaching aid and not developed beyond that. So, we have a global situation where grown-ups conceptualise a haiku as a 5-7-5 epigram. This is a shame. The developmental values and potentials of learning and practicing haiku correctly, scaled to a child's age and ability, could fill a library. In other words; 5-7-5 is ok in the early stages - but it needs to be dropped as soon as a child's brain can
handle more haiku sophistication.
/
at the ancient pond
springing through the air a frog
hear it make a plop!
jp
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When we teach children to haiku we start by explaining that a haiku is a haiku. Its own genre. We can bias haiku as poetry or prose. Later the students will learn to be more subtle. Some haiku merge into something else and we draw the line for this. Senryu, micropoety, haiku-inspired...and so on. Simply stated: haiku is, first and foremost, an observational meditation technique, often in motion, and with a verbal object (icon, shrine) in its final diary form (a symbolic holding pattern, a temporal mnemonic). Haiku is a workout for the brain and develops cerebral felicity , wholeness and integrity. Haiku can evolve the seer. Done incorrectly, in a sustained manner, the resultant synthetic haiku is a poisoner of souls in their glamour and their vanity. — jp
USEFUL (provisional) SCHEMA. . . .
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03-09-11