The low down on haiku

A haiku is a poem consisting of three lines with a specific pattern of syllables: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.

You knew that! But there's more to it than the 5/7/5 pattern.

Here's a link to an interesting haiku story. (The story is worth reading for its own sake.) The author is a Jewish man who took a creative writing class with his wife, where he learned that a true haiku must:

• express something about nature;
• use very concrete terms, never generalities;
• deal with the here and now; and
• be composed of strong nouns and verbs. (It should rarely be necessary to use a modifier, like an adjective or an adverb.)

Moreover,

• each line should contain a complete thought;
• often the three lines are split into two parts, by a colon or a dash, with an imaginative distance between the two sections; and, finally,
• the whole haiku should have a twist that conveys some insight by means of juxtaposition.

Ooh, a challenge! The gauntlet has been thrown down! Now I am compelled to compose a haiku of my own:

Five senses:  lovers'
portal to transcendent realms;
Earthy and sublime.

OK, I cheated, particularly by breaking up the first line. (Rule #41: each line should contain a complete thought.) But I conveyed an insight by means of juxtaposition not too badly, I think.

Form and content stand in uneasy tension with one another — that's where the challenge lies. The poet who perfectly executes both achieves nirvana on the spot.

Are you up to the challenge? Do you have the IQ for haiku?