Haiku

Haiku (俳句) is one of the most important forms of traditional Japanese poetry. Haiku is a very short poetic form, consisting of three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each, and must have a special word - the kigo - that indicates in which season the haiku is set. Some consider that it must also combine two different images which are related in the third line, be written in present tense and have a pause at the end of either the first or second line.

The poet must be concise because of the brevity, while concentrating deep spiritual understanding into the poem. The haiku poet usually takes up the changes of nature which have impressed him in order to express the intangible world of the spirit.

Haiku is not written only by professionals. Anyone can easily learn to use the form.

Some famous Japanese masters of the haiku form include [Matsuo Basho]?, Buson?, Issa?.

An example of classic haiku (by Basho):

 An old pond!
 A frog jumps in-
 the sound of water. 

In early 1998, [Salon] magazine published the [results of a haiku contest] on the topic of computer error messages. The winner:

Three things are certain:

Death, taxes, and lost data.

Guess which has occurred.

However, this does not follow the traditional rules of haiku. This is more similar to the Japanese form, senryu as is much modern haiku.