About Haiku

A haiku is a poem in three lines . . . .  It is made by speaking of something natural and simple suggesting spring, summer, autumn, or winter.  There is no rhyme.  Everything mentioned is just what it is . . . wonderful . . . here . . . but still beyond . . . . 

 from Cricket Songs

~ Harry Behn

In its simplest form, writing a haiku is closer to collecting shells than searching for the proper word.  When you go to the shore to collect shells, you just walk along in a relaxed way, now and then stooping down to look at something interesting or beautiful.  Sometimes you pick up a fragment for its shape or color, and sometimes a fully formed shell.  If you take a daily haiku walk in this same spirit, soon you will find that haiku come all by themselves.

from Seeds from a Birch Tree:  Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey

~ Clark Strand

Poetry and hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you.  And all you can do is to go where they find you.

~Winnie the Pooh

Haiku only come to me when I am being present.  When I put myself into a haiku frame of mind--that is attentive, curious, open--the haiku just sort of fall into my brain.  I usually write, or more precisely, collect, haiku when I go for walks.  It starts as a way of seeing.  Something will catch my eye and sort of shimmer for me.  And I'll walk along, holding that shimmering in my mind, and pretty soon the words will follow.  I walk and play with words and images.  When I get back home, I write them down and continue to play around with them.  My haiku make me happy in a way that almost nothing else does.  I think it's because they are teaching me to see with my heart.

~Holli Rainwater