Haiku Travel Guide

is a kind of Japanese poetry. It was given this name the late 19th century by Masaoka Shiki by a combination of the older and the haikai (or verses) in haikai no renga. Haiku, when known as hokku were the opening verses of a linked verse form, haikai no renga. The traditional haiku consisted of a pattern of 5, 7, 5 on. The Japanese word on, meaning ‘sound’, corresponds to a mora, a phonetic unit similar but not identical to the syllable of languages such as English. (The words onji (‘sound symbol’) was used incorrectly for a long time and moji (character symbol) is also sometimes used.) A haiku may contain a special season word (the kigo) representative of the season in which the renga is set, or a reference to the natural world.
Haiku usually combine three different lines, with a distinct grammatical break, called kireji, usually placed at the end of either the first five or second seven sound units. These two parts of a haiku are called the http://www.ahapoetry.com/h-t-fragment.html ‘phrase and the fragment’. In Japanese, there are actual kireji words. In English, kireji is often replaced with commas, hyphens, elipses, or implied breaks in the haiku. These elements of the older haiku are considered by many to be essential to haiku as well, although they are not always included by modern writers of Japanese ‘free-form haiku’ and of non-Japanese haiku. Japanese haiku are typically written as a single line, while English language haiku are traditionally separated into three lines.
‘In Japanese, nouns do not have different singular and plural forms, so ‘haiku’ is usually used as both a singular and plural noun in English as well.
Senryu is a similar poetry form that emphasizes humor and human foibles instead of seasons, and which may not have kigo or kireji. (...) more....

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