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Feature: Jim Kacian: A Haiku Primer

Endnote — Haiku: The World’s Longest Poem

You have now begun the journey of haiku. You will help maintain its lineage by knowing what it is, how it works, and what has been valued in it for centuries. You will help make it new by bringing to it your own vitality and sensibility, and the new experiences and values which only you and the future can supply. This is what is necessary for haiku to matter: a sense of its past, a relevance to the present, a growing into the future.

It will also help you to see haiku, and your place in it, in larger terms. Haiku is, as we have seen, the world’s shortest poetic form. Properly considered, it is also the world’s longest poem. The goal of every haiku is to see the world aright, see it whole, see it true. Every haiku contributes some small piece to this seeing. Every haiku aims, then, at a common goal, and as such can be seen as a piece of a whole. When considered in this way, haiku becomes the agglomeration of thousands, even millions, of small moments, from nearly the same number of poets over several centuries, shared by way of a common form. We are a part of this far-ranging community, and as such can feel the power which community can bring to such an enterprise. Basho once wrote that a life in which even a single perfect haiku was written was not lived in vain. It was in this context that such a statement means something. And we, too, will make our contributions, which others today and in future generations will appreciate and make part of their view of the universe.

I once wrote, in another context, that another poet had wondered aloud what I might hope to accomplish by working in such a brief form as haiku. I answered, quite spontaneously, that such a question was similar to pondering what God might have done with the universe if he hadn’t had to work moment by moment. The cumulative effect is rather magnificent, despite the modesty of the building blocks. I believe haiku is precisely what we need in our lives today. Its brevity permits us access in as short a time as we might have to spare, and for the same reason makes further consideration often and at odd moments much easier. But we need not spend hours to know the intuitive sense of any of the best haiku. A few moments, deeply considered, are enough.

At the same time, haiku are deep. They move past the surface of things as we are accustomed to seeing them, and connect us with those things that lie beneath the surface: the way things really are, the way we really feel. There is a great need in our time of glossy surfaces to find resonance beneath the slickness. Haiku help us do this. At bottom, haiku connect us with ourselves, with the earth, with our time and place on earth. They are about the real, the here and now, the truth. We need this now more than ever, in our time of provisional truths and circumstantial ethics, and yes, of quantum physics and virtual time. Haiku ground us in ways which are undeniable to our ways of being. They make us see what is right in front of us, right now, and when we can see what is right here, we are better able to manage what has been and still might be. Haiku is a gift, from one to another, from our generations to those which will come, and ultimately to ourselves.

the silence
while the gift
is being opened

. . . Myra Scovel

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Jim Kacian is founder and president of The Haiku Foundation; owner of Red Moon Press; and editor-in-chief of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W.Norton, 2013). He is the founder and is the general editor of Contemporary Haibun. He's also the founder of Contemporary Haibun Online and was its general editor until Bob Lucky stepped into the role.

A Draft of "A Haiku Primer" was first published in f/k/a: archives real opinions & real haiku,