RE: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Proposal: The Haiku Bonus

["Jonathan Van Matre" <JVanMatre@xxxxxxxx>]

The article on joke haiku is interesting, but this proposal is actually born out of a deep respect for traditional haiku / senryu, nor is it proposing haiku because they would be funny.  

I think the spirit of concision and economy of expression that characterizes haiku is a worthy goal for our proposals.  The most plainly-stated laws/rules/proposals are often the most universal...e.g. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" or "Chop Wood, Carry Water".

As someone who has admittedly written some of the wordiest proposals we've seen so far, I deliberately chose haiku as a challenge to myself and others to think of rules that can be so plainly and simply stated.

Will we see many successful ones?  Probably not.  But the attempts should prove interesting.

Limericks would also be interesting as deliberately jokey fare, though.

Sonnets would be too long to qualify as bandwidth restriction, but the time it takes to write one might well distract people from creating other proposals.

--Scoff!

p.s.  For an explanation of feet and meter, see http://www.stedwards.edu/hum/klawitter/poetics/scansion.html

p.p.s.  For one source that analyzes in depth *why* a foot-based stricture may be more appropriate for English-language haiku than the 5-7-5 syllable rule we have all been taught in elementary school, see The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English, with selected Examples; by Kenneth Yasuda; Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1957.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Gerlach [mailto:egerlach@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 2:29 PM
> To: spoon-discuss@xxxxxxxxx
> Subject: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Proposal: The Haiku Bonus
> 
> 
> On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, Jonathan Van Matre wrote:
> 
> > __Bandwidth Limitation Of A Different Stripe__
> > 
> > [[This should encourage some creativity as we try to 
> shoehorn meaningful proposals into the laconic haiku form.]]
> > 
> > Create a new rule:
> > 
> > __The Haiku Bonus__
> 
> Hrmm... as interesting as this is... I must oppose it.  For a 
> few reasons:
> 
> 1) I'm against it in principle: 
> http://www.phenry.org/junkdrawer/haiku/
> (this doesn't propose to allow joke haiku, but it's about the same...
> limerick rules would be funny, or some well thought-out sonnets....)
> 
> 2) I don't think this will make intelligeble, useful rules;
> 
> 3) Excuse my lack of poetry terminology knowledge, but what 
> the heck are
> feet?
> 
> 4) I'd like to save the title "Zen Master of Nomic" for something more
> Zen-ish :)
> 
> 5) This might fit somewhat better with something I'm going to 
> propose next
> nweek. :)
> 
> Bean