While I learned a lot from attending the meetings and later presiding over them for a year and taking on the editorship of Frogpond, its house organ, I never quite got used to the yelling and screaming and put downs.   more »

His reply came typed on a manual typewriter, its ribbon badly in need of changing. It was an inspiring letter from a kind man encouraging me to keep writing. He said if I continued to practice my craft, I would, in his opinion, one day have a wide reading audience.   more »

Guidelines for Writing Haiku in English


Haiku is about the NOW moment.  Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but the present.

FORGET the 17 syllable myth but try not to use more than 17 syllables.

A haiku can be written in as few as three syllables as in Raymond Roseliep's (from Listen to Light, Alembic Press):

snow:
all's
new

FORGET poetic devices like metaphor and simile.

FORGET trying to intellectualize.

Haiku is called the poetry of the noun. Use little or no adjectives and rarely rarely adverbs.

Although haiku can rhyme, most haiku that rhyme are flops.  Beginners need to stay away from rhymes.

Forget personification.  Clouds do not weep.

Season words focus a haiku but they are not absolutely necessary.

A nature sketch is not a haiku.  Underneath a haiku there is emotion but not stated emotion.

Haiku is not just a pretty picture.

No need to explain yourself. Get out of your head and into your heart but forget sentimentality.

Be specific. What kind of tree? What is the name of that flower?

Wikipedia is not the Gospel so take what you read there with a grain of salt.

Beginners need to read haiku as do seasoned haiku writers.  Best place to start is the R. H. Blyth books -- there are six volumes.

Most people in a haiku class won't get haiku right away.  Most people in a haiku class will walk away refusing to forget everything they think they know.  And it's not unusual for some students to hold their breath until they turn purple because they will not open to another point of view.*

It takes a long time to "get" haiku.  Read the old masters like Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki and read those who write in English. A good resource is THE HAIKU ANTHOLOGY by Cor Van den Heuvel (Norton).

Subscribe to well established haiku journals like Modern Haiku and Frogpond.  And know that most people on Twitter don't have a clue about haiku.  You can't learn haiku from twitter.

Once you know the rules, you can break them.

When you write about yourself, people and society, chances are you're writing a senryu. Read Blyth's SENRYU (a monster-size book) and check out the two issues of PRUNE JUICE (Journal of Senryu and Kyoka) which you can read on line for free at Modern English Tanka Press.

I will be updating these guidelines. I've written these rather hurriedly because a friend of mine will soon be teaching a course and needs immediate direction. In the meantime I will be searching for an article I published in East West Journal in the early 80's and will post it here.

REMEMBER, WHEN YOU STUDY HAIKU YOUR PROSE WILL IMPROVE. HAIKU HELPS US BECOME BETTER EDITORS.

HAIKU is a form of meditation and many of us use it as part of our spiritual discipline.

EXAMPLES OF HAIKU  (HAIKU VOLUME 2 SPRING, R.H. Blyth):

At the old pond
a frog jumps -
plop!                      (Basho)

Come and play
with me
motherless, fatherless sparrow      (Issa)


EXAMPLES OF SENRYU:

Peach blossoms
but the ferryman
is deaf                     (Shiko)


Bringing them up,
they call the silkworms
"Mister"                                (Issa)


*My Oriental Medicine professor, the late John R. Worsley, told us all on the first day of class, "You know nothing." He also drummed into us that the more mistakes we made, the better practitioners we would become. For example, the worst point-location student, instead of flunking out, would work until she became so proficient in finding points that she would teach others. The same is true for Japanese poetry in English.

When I was in Kumamoto, Japan in 2007 receiving a haiku award, I was asked on the spur of the moment to speak to an audience of about l00 people. After bowing deeply, I told them how I tried for six months to write a good haiku, kept submitting to journals only to receive rejection slips, until that wonderful day when Randy Brooks (ed. Mayfly) accepted "Husband home from work / haiku for dinner / again" (although technically that poem IS a senryu).

An excellent revelation about the swine flu scam. Read about it here and spread the word to everyone you know.   more »

Ethiopa is one of those magical places still left on the earth. Take a look at how The People of the Omo decorate their bodies with plant life that still exists around them.   more »

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Grounding is important for everyone, including poets and writers simply because we are working with high frequencies that often leave us jittery and uneasy. Poetry is a spiritual practice, even if you've never thought of it that way.   more »

M. Kei had the brain storm last night on Twitter -- an anthology of tanka and haiku about cats.
You may post your poems on Twitter using the hashmark #catzilla.

For example:

Who knows / where she goes / cat whiter than the snow  #haiku #catzilla

               c copyright 2009 by Alexis Rotella

All of these tanka were twittered within the last two months. Enjoy them. And feel free to give me your feedback. Alexis Rotella   more »

Know the Difference between a Cold/FLU and H1N1 Flu Symptoms   more »

A number of my fellow poets and I have been jamming on Twitter with literary fragments.  To get a handle on what I'm talking about, you can order IN PIECES edited by Olivia Dresher and/or go to her on-line journal at www.fraglit.com.
If what you write isn't exactly a haiku or a tanka, it may fit the bill for a literary fragment.  Feel free to follow me on Twitter @mamasanta. Although my tweets are protected, I don't refuse anyone access.

Fraglits = jazz with words.

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This is an exquisite collection of haiku that touch your heart and inform it. Rotella has the master's touch with this tiny poetic form. Her choices of tercet or monostich are a lesson in the technique. Read this one and keep it to read over and over again. Denis M. Garrison   more »

Literary Fragments from the early l980's by Alexis Rotella   more »

Spread the word -- this book contains a lot of wisdom and humor.   more »

Musical Chairs has been posted on SCRIBD.COM for only 24 hours and already it has had 99 reads! It's an ...   more »

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It has been said that once everyone in the world spoke the same language; but it was the ego that started our speaking in different tongues...anything to make us feel separate and not connected to "the One."   more »