Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from August, 2014

haiku uncut: Blithe Spirit

Many thanks to David Bingham, editor of 'Blithe Spirit', journal of the British Haiku Society , for publishing the following article this month Volume 24 Number 3. haiku uncut Take a look through any haiku journal or anthology and the majority of haiku will be constructed from a fragment preceding a phrase, or vice versa. They might be composed over the usual three lines or along a single line. The kire, the cut or caesura, may be explicit in the form of punctuation, or suggested by line break, or by phrasal construction, as in this fine monostich example from ‘Blithe Spirit’ 24.2 where the natural breath pause after rock-and-roll is obvious when read aloud: rock-and-roll she outdid me that summer Frances Angela           The American haijin, Jane Reichhold, was instrumental in articulating and disseminating this structure, both online [1] and in her accessible and informative handbook, Writing and Enjoying Haiku, A Hands-on Guide (Kodansha Internationa