haiku

in Latin

Haiku

Haiku is a verse form which originated in Japan as a development renga, traditional style poems worked on by more than one poet. These works were written in a kind of syllabic couplet (tanka), with the first three rows considered conceptually related and yet distinct from the second three. Humourous adaptation of this pattern known as haikai became popular with the three-row 17-syllable leader of prime importance: the hokku.

English-language speakers tend to think of the metre of the form as 5 syllables, followed by 7, followed by 5. This is not a strict interpretation, though, as the Japanese version is based on word rather than syllable patterns. In other languages, poets have varied the metre in whatever way they feel best expresses their own language pattern.

I have always found haiku to be fascinating and beautiful, and although there is no real content limitation, it seems to me to have a kind of reflective quality - as if one were taking a snapshot of a moment in time which can later recall that state of being to your mind. Perhaps it would be fun experimenting with a kind of postmodern haiku form, but - hey - I've gone even further.

Some of the really great qualities of the Latin language are its succinct expression and flexible word order. I confess here and now that I'm no master in its use, and Latin composition, prose or otherwise, does not have a large place in today's overworked and underfunded Classics departments. But I really wanted to try to write haiku in Latin.

[too weird for me, let me out right now]

Okay, brave warrior, read on!

Haiku Primum

(Inspired by a healthy dose of paranoia and that stuff my mother told me.)

ALIS GALLORUM
ATRO CAELUM SPISSANTEM
DOMUM VOLANTES

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Haiku Secundum

(Inspired by a conversation about how to tell a person of the opposite sex that you're not interested in them In That Way, and a later allusion to a very long polysyllabic word.)

LINGUAM LONGULAM
AMOVE NON AMO TE
SUB SUBUCULA

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Haiku Tertium

(In which our heroine, inspired by this novel form of communication, attempts the triple backward somersault with underhanded pike - an attempt to encapsulate Hamet's soliloquy in seventeen syllables.)

QUOMODO ESSE
LUGERE AUT LUCTARI
ET VINCAM VICES

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You may hold your score cards up now, iudices, and either mail me with peals of laughter, sneers at my syntactical faults, or even your very own attempts at haiku in Latin. There's got to be someone else out there who's following the same sidus...

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Links to fabulous haiku stuff

Random Word haiku from Indiana University

Haiku error messages contest from Salon.com

Haiku FAQ by Alexey Andreyev

Haiku madness at someone who's not always dressed's website

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Interesting books

Haiku Handbook : How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku by William J. Higginson

Tonight They All Dance: English and Latin haiku by Dirk Sacré and Marcel Smets

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© Breath of the Lizard MMVI