Japanese Haiku, by Peter Beilenson, , at sacred-texts.com THE
hokkuor more properly haikuis a tiny verse-form in which
Japanese poets have been working for hundreds of years.
Originally it was the first part of the tanka, a five-line poem,
often written by two people as a literary game: one writing
three lines, the other, two lines capping them. But the hokku,
or three-line starting verse, became popular as a separate form.
As such it is properly called haiku, and retains an incredible
popularity among all classes of Japanese. There are only
seventeen syllables in the haiku, the first and third lines
contain five, the second line seven. There is almost always in
it the name of the season, or a key word giving the season by
inference. (This is a short-cut, costing the poet only one or
two syllables, whereby the reader can immediately comprehend the
weather, the foliage, the bird and insect-lifeand the emotions
traditional to the season: factors which almost always are
important in the poem.) But there is also,