otherwise it is no more than a brief statement. That is the point which has been missed by such Western imitators of the haiku form as Amy Lowell, who saw in the haiku its brevity and suggestion, but did not understand the methods by which the effects were achieved. Here are two of Miss Lowell’s haiku:
A Lover
If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly
I could see to write you a letter.
Brighter than the fireflies upon the Uji River
Are your words in the dark, Beloved.[1]
In these examples the words are poetic, but the verses do not have the quality of a haiku, for the reason I have given. They suggest rather the shorter links of 14 syllables in a linked-verse series, which, however, never stand alone, and cannot be considered complete poems. There is an art to writing these shorter links as well, and although Bashō today is famed chiefly for his haiku in 17 syllables, he was also a master of the 14-syllable link. As I have mentioned, the haiku itself originated as the opening verse of a linked-verse series, and it in fact never lost the potentiality of serving as a poetic building block. Thus, to Bashō’s haiku, “The ancient pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of the water”, his disciple Kikaku added a link in 14 syllables:
| ashi no wakaba ni | On the young shoots of the reeds |
| kakaru kumo no su | A spider’s web suspended. |
This link fulfils the purpose of complementing the opening one.
- ↑ From Pictures of the Floating World. Miss Lowell’s best haiku are probably the ones on modern themes in What’s O’Clock?
