Michael Dylan Welch is a famous name in the world of haiku. You don’t have to read many of his poems to understand why.
In Becoming a Haiku Poet, Welch guides the reader through some of the basic techniques of what makes a good haiku. This is an excellent primer from one of the best. Haiku is poetry condensed to its essence, and this tutorial is as condensed as haiku itself.
Welch demonstrates how to use inference to build a strong haiku. This is a technique of subtlety, and as someone once said, it takes confidence to be subtle. My own haiku are most commonly not this subtle, but that mastery of inference is something I can enjoy working toward.
Also, note the link to his tips on writing haiku at the bottom of the article.
Thanks, Bryon. I’m gaining more respect for haiku by the day. I’ve read a lot of them that I admired but didn’t know why. (A lot of them, by the way, were 5-7-5, but that was never the reason I liked them.) Knowing why something works is important to writing. I’m definitely using haiku in ENG223 (Creative Writing) this fall.
I used to call haiku a type of imagist poetry — “common speech … free verse … clear concrete imagery(WordNet) — but I think now it’s more accurate to say that “imagist” is an incomplete description of haiku.
I’m posting one on poetseye that I wrote after reading the Welch article, describing a moment a few days ago.
For some reason my poetseye link doesn’t work, but you know where I live. I think one link per comment is all that’s allowed.
I changed the settings here and the link to your haiku works now.