Lew Watts

The Art of Haibun Prose

Part 3: The Turn

Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

Note: Part 1 of this essay appeared in cho 21.3 and dealt with how to approach writing the prose of a haibun—how to enter the story, choose a persona, and establish a point of view. Part 2 (cho 22.1) examined the actual writing of haibun prose based on the aesthetics summarized in Part 1. Part 3 addresses how a key element of those aesthetics, that “something has to happen,” can be achieved by means of a “turn.” As noted at the end of Part 2:

That turn keeps the momentum going … Invariably, this is what gives them their narrative power, a sudden shift that catches the reader by surprise and releases a burst of energy.

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Making Something Happen

There are several ways to “make something happen” within the prose of a haibun—to make readers’ eyes widen and hearts beat faster, to jolt their systems. Most obvious is through the storyline itself. Here, the experience being described must be interesting, lively, even action-packed. Far from a literary slide show of your last vacation (there are too many of these), it’s the kind of short story you could tell friends over coffee, or in a bar, where no one would leave or interrupt.

A second way is through the style of writing. Pacing, through variations of sentence length, can easily liven up an otherwise staid narrative, particularly if combined with interesting language and aural effects. Sharp dialogue, in the vernacular, is another powerful way of engaging the reader. And now and then, a haibun appears with arresting prose like this, from “Checkout Girl” by Farah Ali.

neon enhances merchandise turns sallow skin
sallower dark circles cheap concealer layers acne
ugly blouse shiver fridges too close. shift starts hi
scan beep boyfriend beep exams beep clothes beep
broke beep pinch belly fat beep check collarbone
beep don’t beep think beep don’t think about beep
things you don’t beep want to think about beep here’s
your change. lonely men talk beep pretend beep to care
beep what does your name mean beep Joy beep pretty
like your eyes Joy beep smile beep cash card receipt
happy-rest-of-the-night watch darkness swallow them
whole…

This is wonderful prose, driven forward by those repeated beeps as items are scanned at a supermarket check-out. You can almost feel the mixture of boredom, anguish, and despair in the mindless sweeping of articles, of the inane chat-up lines, of what the check-out girl is really thinking. Something is happening, and it’s in the writing. No wonder it won a 2026 Touchstone Award.

The third way is by means of a turn within the prose. Often referred to as a (plot) twist, reversal, or “volta” (Italian for “turn”), a “turn” in literature is a significant shift in mood, tone, perspective, setting, or even premise. In its softest form it can act as a hinge that breathes life into the narrative and maintains momentum; in its most dramatic, it provides an unexpected shock, often turning a story on its head. For this reason, it is often used toward the end of a piece of prose, though it can occur anywhere, and sometimes several times.

A review of critical articles and essays reveals a plethora of ways in which writers of short-form literature create and apply poetic turns. Here are some of the more useful ones:

• a sudden change in voice, tone, or mood
• change in point of view (POV)—for example, from third person to second person
• a temporal turn where the narrative shifts to a different time
• a change of location (which almost always occurs with a temporal shift)
• change in imagery (e.g. from an object to a person, or one person to another)
• a sudden shift to a counterargument, as in a volta
• overturning the reader’s assumptions, or turning the story on its head
• metaphor-to-meaning, where the meaning of an employed metaphor is revealed
• defamiliarization, where familiar objects or concepts are made strange
• silence, where an empty space or phrasing creates sudden ambiguity
• a non-sequitur, where the traditional narrative is disrupted by an illogical jump
• using more than one voice or perspective to overturn traditional interpretations

I’m sure all the above and more have appeared at one time or another in a haibun. But in my experience, the most common are the first six.

Six Types of Turns

Here are the six types, with examples—I have added italics for when the turn begins. (We have already seen examples of each in Part 2, and I have provided links to them.)

1. Change in Voice, Tone, or Mood

The voice (who is speaking) and tone (the speaker’s attitude) set the haibun’s overall mood, which can span the spectrum from contentment to despair. Staying within a given mood, however, can become predictable or even tedious if the narrative lacks action. A sudden shift to a different register, like one of anger, or to an opposite (as in from hateful to loving), can be highly effective.

Here is an example by Nalini Shetty.

Shifting Horizons

I signed up for a Vipassana meditation retreat, expecting transformation. Ten days of silence, disconnected from the world, seemed the perfect recipe for wisdom and serenity. By the third day, I imagined slipping away, unnoticed, into the world beyond.

The woman next to me crunched her carrot sticks louder than seemed humanly possible. A bird outside my window woke me at 4 a.m., its insistent song more intrusion than invitation. My mind, far from quieting, spun endlessly through regrets, grocery lists, and the arguments I should have won.

empty cushion
the breeze rests
where I cannot

Note how the sudden change of mood at the start of the second paragraph gives that extra boost of ironic momentum. And use of the word “shifting” in the title works wonderfully in retrospect, as all good titles should.

Other examples from Part 2: “Deliverance” by Julie Mellor; my own “You Can’t Go Back Home.”

2. Change in Point of View (POV)

Since most haibun are written in the first person, there are several options for POV turns—to third or second person, singular or plural. A sudden shift into the second person can be particularly effective and often works best toward the end of the prose, as in this example by Cherie Hunter Day.

Finale

While others pick their favorite season, even fine-tune their selections to a single month, I’ve downgraded autumn. October is too clever with its bright severance, an early circus before November’s amnesia. Falling leaves are inadequate as a metaphor for loss — death can’t be the last untethered joyride. There are endless negotiations behind the scenes to loosen connections. There’s no discount for the wiring frayed by grief. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, drop by. I won’t greet you at the gate. Make your way up the smoldering hill and look for an orange door.

goldenrod
each room unlocks
from inside

Here, the shift to “you” unexpectedly addresses the reader. And immediately following the word “grief,” it takes the prose in a different direction framed by pathos.

An example from Part 2, this time showing a shift from third to second person: “The Shipping Forecast.”

3. Temporal Shift (Sometimes with Changed Location)

In Part 2 of this essay we discussed how temporal shifts can occur between prose and haiku, particularly if the prose ends with a “hard landing.” But equally powerful is an unexpected temporal shift within the prose. In “2 am,” by Keith Polette, we saw how the past tense switched, unexpectedly, to present tense in the final phrasing accompanied by a strong change of image and tone. By contrast, my haibun “A Keeper” shifted suddenly from present to future tense, which allowed the prose to move into the imaginary and surreal.

Here is a wonderful example from past to present tense, by Peter Newton.

First Love

After dinner, we climbed out the bathroom window at the top of the law library. All Gothic-style carved granite and leaded glass. No one would get away with it today. They’d be arrested, expelled. Among the grimacing gargoyles, we peered down over the Quad with its crisscross of lamp-lit paths—a metaphor for our own chance meeting. We said little, under the spell of the magnificent strangers we were to each other.

After forty years, I still feel like we’re getting away with something. Like we live in a world inside a world, watched over by our younger selves.

your lucky stone
my acorn amulet
exchanging vows

This turn marks a strong break between reminiscences of the past and a present where these feelings have become reality. Note also how this is reinforced by a change of POV while also maintaining the first-person plural, “we.”

Other examples from Part 2: “Blackout” by Clare Martin and “Grief: The Uncut Version” by Roberta Beary.

4. Change in Image or Imagery

Haibun, with its emphasis on concrete images, would seem a natural candidate for this kind of turn. Yet it is relatively rare, in my experience—I would love to see more haibun using it. Here is an example by Peter Yovu.

Now You Are Gone All Over

I am taken in by the words I wrote for him a long time ago and forgot. I am taken down to a root cellar. Roots dangling like the leather grips in subway cars when I was a child. Roots dangling like dark lightnings in the earth. My father could reach them. I had to reach for him.

your hand withdrawn

I am taken down and become a mole with sensitive whiskers and dead eyes. And become a teen boy slumped, strung out as the train he’s on slips into its tube. And become Hades casting a violet dream-light over his hoarded mineral wealth.

and mine in a dark pocket

And so I must climb out, must claw my way up the roots of my own words back to the world itself, back to street level, to people bustling, crowding onto the Staten Island Ferry. Back home to say good-bye once more…

reaching for a nickel

In this haibun, the writer becomes a mole before he switches back to a teen boy and then, improbably, Hades. But at the start of the final paragraph of prose, there is a sense of a further turn combined with ambiguity—who or what is climbing out? With so many sudden shifts, the haibun hums with momentum, supported by the braiding of the haiku.

Here is a very different example from my haibun “Spatial Concept: Waiting,” which appeared in Part 1 of this essay.

The first time I saw it was at the Tate and I was with you for the first time you were so young and beautiful and your skin was perfect then when you asked me to go with you I bought some books from the salvation army the kind with lots of photos so I didn’t come across as some kind of dick or stupid even recognized a few paintings before reading the label each time I said an artist’s name you’d turn and smile even if I got it wrong made me sometimes wish I’d stitched my mouth shut And then suddenly there it was hanging alone on a white wall the beige canvas slashed I could almost hear the right arm stabbing then dragging the blade down and across though later things moved on to multiple wounds and different tools—bare hands, nails, chisels, even screwdrivers by then I’d lost track of you after the first scars appeared your way of cutting off an older deeper pain you said I’m here lost lost you lost.

In the published version of this haibun, the text was also cut to reflect the slashed canvas of Lucio Fontana’s art piece. This has drawn several comments, but what truly makes the prose “happen” is the turn. In the italicized text above, the subject shifts from the right arm of the artist to the (arm of the) girl. The question is, when does this transfer happen—immediately, at “multiple wounds,” at “bare hands,” or at the end? By making the turn gradual, the reader is repeatedly unsettled through uncertainty.

Another example, from Part 2: “A Keeper” (narrator becomes a hooked fish)

5. A Shift to Counterargument

Since the link from prose to haiku often behaves like a sonnet’s volta (and has been described this way), it’s perhaps not surprising that similar use within the prose is less common. Here is an example by Sandip Chauhan.

Appendix B
in the voice of Bertha von Suttner

They dismissed me as too solemn, too insistent, as if war were something to be worn lightly. I tightened the lace at my throat and turned to the page. That battlefield, too, was lined with trenches. From there, men redrew borders with ink and sent boys to die with the flick of a pen. I watched them applaud the cavalry, sabers catching the sun, then disappear before the moaning began.

They called it sentiment. I called it reckoning. Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the refusal to glamorize it. To write peace is not to soften truth, but to show what’s left after the medals are pinned, when the mothers arrive with no sons left to claim.

So I wrote and wrote until even the silence pressed back.

burial hour
a crow lands softly
on the folded flag

The three counter-arguments in the prose are accompanied by shifts into the first person. By repeating these turns, the emotional stakes are raised so that, after the third occurrence, the “voice of Bertha von Suttner” can proclaim her true, core beliefs.

Another example, from Part 2: “The Surprise Journey of Random Objects” by Doris Jean Lynch.

6. Overturning Assumptions or Expectations

This is a relatively under-used turn in haibun prose, though there are a wide range of available methods and possibilities. By its very nature, it can be arresting, particularly by injecting momentary confusion.

Here is an example by Roberta Beary.

Hail Mary Pass

My stepdaughter Eva sends a selfie from the protest. I glance at her daughter Willow on the sofa, pouring pretend tea to her teddies. Willow’s soft blond curls and broken blue eyes match Eva’s. Two hours pass before Eva sends a text, “detained for disturbing the peace.” I check her location. My chest tightens as I scroll my contacts. The Blessed Virgin, her foot on a snake, watches from the alcove.

breaking news

Uncle Steve answers on the first ring. One of the good ones. Not a single brutality complaint. Passed over for promotion and overdue for retirement, my uncle spends his days teaching women self-defense at the community center. He promises to call back. When he does, he mentions a sergeant who tracks down the arresting officer. Eva is let go with a warning.

sunlight weaves

This story is not about Uncle Steve, who will call when he needs a loan. It’s not about Eva, who will never thank me for minding Willow, asleep with her teddy bears. This is about the Blessed Virgin, her foot on a snake, who watches from her alcove. Until. I get down. On my knees. And begin.

the spiderweb

After two paragraphs of Eve and Uncle Steve, the prose turns and upends our expectations. The story is not about them—what it is about can then unfold.

Here is an additional example (from my haibun “The Lamby”) that works in a different way.

Shadows through the low mist. And the scent of tidal grass. A new path today, my boots already slick with dew. Then faintly through the silence, the river. Can you hear it? That’s the sound of the sea, calling. How differently from yesterday, last week, last year. Fading now, though little else has changed. Time was, I would come here every day, to listen. Can you hear it? That’s the sound of the sea, calling. By then she had gone. Gone as she had promised. No longer waiting for the flashlight’s glare. No longer lying, slumped in mud, her bubbled breath mumbling, over and over, Can you hear it? That’s the sound of the sea, calling. But now, as the mist begins to lift, a softer whisper in the wind. Can you hear it? Can you hear her, calling?

The key to the turn is the phrase, “Can you hear it? That’s the sound of the sea, calling.” It appears twice in the early narrative in what we assume are the descriptive words of the writer. In its third appearance (also italicized in the original), it is now clearly the voice of a woman. Those two first occurrences are now revealed to be the same woman’s voice, who has been haunting the writer as he roams the tidal flats.

Other examples from Part 2: “My Sky Train” by P.F. Fischer, and my “Bloke Talk.”

To Conclude

Haibun’s core structure is purpose-built to deliver what the wider literary world would call a “turn.” The space between haiku and prose (and indeed the cut within the haiku) can serve to “make something happen” by shifting the direction, setting, tone, and imagery of the haibun.

But the same can also be achieved within the prose. In fact, I believe most times it should.

An exciting and interesting narrative naturally makes things happen, and great writing can certainly create pace and momentum to maintain the reader’s attention. But I would argue the single most powerful tool the haibun writer has is the turn. Many successful haibun poets use turns within the prose, and some of the most celebrated and anthologized haibun feature turns of remarkable power. These turns literally drive the haibun. They make it fire.

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Credits

• “Checkout Girl” by Farah Ali first appeared in Modern Haiku 56.3 (2025). The entire haibun can be found the the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award archive.
• “Shifting Horizons” by Nalini Shetty first appeared in Drifting Sands Haibun 31 (2025)
• “Finale” by Cherie Hunter Day first appeared in contemporary haibun online 21.1 (2025)
• “First Love” by Peter Newton first appeared in Drifting Sands Haibun 34 (2025)
• “Now You Are Gone all Over” by Peter Yovu first appeared in Frogpond 48.1 (2025)
• “Appendix B” by Sandip Chauhan first appeared in Drifting Sands Haibun 33 (2025)
• “Hail Mary Pass” by Roberta Beary first appeared in contemporary haibun online 21.3 (2025)
• “The Lamby” appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly 31 (2025)

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About the Author

Lew Watts is haibun co-editor of Frogpond and author of two Snapshot Press books, Tick-Tock (2019) and Eira (2023), the latter of which won a 2024 Touchstone Award and an HSA Merit Book Awardfor Best Book of Haibun. He is also the co-author, with Roberta Beary and Rich Youmans, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023).

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