Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] computer haiku

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

OK, skip this if you aren't really into haiku or poetics.  Sorry, 
but I can't stop myself here. :-)

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Mikhail Kovalenko wrote:

> Mike Miller wrote:
> >>>Three things are certain:
> >>>Death, taxes and lost data.
> >>>Guess which has occurred.
> > 
> > That one actually got me to laugh out loud because the last line took me
> > by surprise.  It's a good one!
> 
> Here's a haiku I wrote some time ago to post on the locked office doors 
> during staff meetings:
> 
> Desolate buildings
> Tumbleweed roams freely
> Meeting in progress

OK, so now I get to prove to you all that I was in fact an 
English major back in the day.  While there is nothing wrong 
with either of these short verses, I'm pretty sure the second would 
not pass muster as being a classically correct haiku, although the 
first just might.  

In addition to the well-known requirements that a haiku have:

1) 5 syllables in the first line
2) 7 syllables in the second line
3) 5 syllables in the third line
4) no other syllables or lines

There are some other less well-known requirements.  Two of these are 
metrical or linguistic:

5) a haiku really should include a strong "cutting" point that 
   divides the verse into two parts.  Usually this cutpoint occurs
   at the end of the first or second line.

6) every haiku must contain a "season word" which indicates the time 
   of year in which the haiku is set.  There are obvious season 
   words like "spring", less obvious ones like "cherry blossoms" or 
   "mosquitoes" and some truly unobvious ones.

Now, if that wasn't enough, it is also the case that there are some 
desirable thematic requirements, namely:

7) Haiku is "truer" if there is no central point of interest in it; 
   a point is to capture a whole scene, or freeze a moment in time.

8) Haiku is best when it captures a poet's first impression of a 
   scene from daily life which become "new" because of the way in
   which the moment is captured.

I think these rules and distinctions are more than sheer pedantry as
a *really* excruciatingly correct and clever haiku is pretty 
amazing.  So let's look closely at our contenders:

   Three things are certain:
   Death, taxes and lost data.
   Guess which has occurred.

Here we get full point for rules 1-4, and a passing grade for rule 5 
(the cut).  This verse has two cut points but the second one is 
*way* stronger.  On the season word front, things are a bit 
trickier.  In our culture, I think you could argue that death and 
taxes are both appropriate season words, but they point to different 
seasons, which is problematic.  For rules 7 and 8, I think we're 
doing basically fine on 7 (no central interest point), and 
passably on 8 (the issue there being that lost data is a recurrent 
and timeless event rather than a specific event in time).  For all 
that, though, I think we can find this one worthy.

And now Mikhail's:

   Desolate buildings
   Tumbleweed roams freely
   Meeting in progress

The show-stopper here is that line two is a syllable short.  
Another point is that there is no single "cut" that one could point
to (the 3 lines all seem equally independent).  I would count
"tumbleweed"  as a season word myself, and I think this passes all
other rules acceptably once we realize that the specific genres of
"computer haiku" or "office haiku" contain the secret irony that
there *are* no seasons in those forms of daily life, and that every
moment you freeze into haiku could have happened almost anytime or
anywhere.

Anyway, I think the following slight modification to Mikhail's 
version would make it haiku:

   Desolate buildings
   Where tumbleweed roams freely:
   Meeting in progress.

Now it's 5-7-5 and has a single strong cut.  Obviously, there are 
many other ways this could have been achieved, but this one works.

jking



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