Hijacked Haikus

In an earlier post, we glanced askance at the importation of the haiku form, from its natural habitat in a syllable-timed language without independent stress, like Japanese (or French), into an emphatically dynamic, stress-laden language like English,  which is much better served  by drumbeat metres  like the ballad.

The preëminence, however, of the haiku in Japanese, as well as its persistent (if ill-starred) favor among anglophones,  suggests that the genre  deserves a second look.

Not to be imported slavishly, wholesale; but adapted, as has many a metre before.

And so we have bred a new breed (deep in the underground poetry-laboratories of WDJ),

by Haiku out of Rootabaga Stories:

minimalist like its original,  with a likewise light touch,

yet ferociously stress-centred.

This new birth marks a date, in the poetic firmament.

View the new arrival, in all its hopeful trembling newness,

here.