mydailyhaiku.com

 

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Welcome to my website.  If you follow link 'the haiku' above you will find my haiku.  For the homepage of this site, I intend to post short essays from time to time about my experiences in haiku writing.  In this debut essay, I will explain why I started writing my daily haiku.

 

As a teenager I was a fan of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.  Reading it, I became intrigued by the artistic process of producing it.  The pace of creating a piece of art on a daily basis impressed me.  While reading the collections, the day to day progress Bill Watterson made as an artist is very transparent.  While each strip is a piece on its own, the collection shows an artist exploring, sometimes failing, but often reveling in some new discovery.  That process was something I wanted to engage in myself.

 

A few years ago I saw an exhibit of Edwin Dickinson's art.  He would spend many years working on large intricate pieces, but he also produced an interesting series of quickies that he called premier coups ("first strikes").  These were simple spontaneous works painted in one sitting, most of which were done en plein air.  I connected with this artistic experience immediately.  I once had an idea for a short story on my way home from work, and then wrote it in its entirety that evening.  The thought of having completed something so new, something that I hadn't even conceived of yet when I woke up that day, was quite satisfying.

 

Several years ago I read that the lyricist in my favorite band was going to write a haiku each day for a year.  This prompted me to look up what a haiku is.  I didn't have any inclination to try writing them at the time, but the idea of writing a small poem each day stayed with me.

 

Then I bought a book, an empty book with a blue cover and gray lines on the pages.  At the time of the purchase, I was thinking that I might start keeping a diary.  Recording the daily facts of my life did not appeal to me, so I tried thinking of a novel way to record some of my more interesting life experiences.  None of these ideas ever took root and I never started a diary.  But that empty book sat on my desk waiting to be filled.  For more than a year it sat there and I looked at it almost every day.

 

Then last year, when I was busy with a full time job plus graduate school, I felt myself growing more and more frustrated with my lack of creative output.  My responsibilities wouldn't allow me to commit to writing a novel, so I tried to think of other means of artistic expression that could help defuse my frustrations.  Writing a daily haiku seemed feasible.

 

I thumbed through a few books and did some internet surfing to find out exactly what a haiku is.  I learned that most people don't agree.  Before I started, I knew that part of my journey would involve trying all the different types of haiku.  I would follow some rules and then break them the next month.   I would seek out what I thought was a true haiku.  My exploration of what makes a real haiku will follow in future essays.

 

I hoped to start my daily haiku on the first day after the final exam for my summer course, but I had a haiku moment a week earlier.  I've been writing one a day ever since.

 

I don't know anyone else who does this, but I don't think it is very odd.  After all, how many people do crossword puzzles every day?  In my mind, a daily haiku is the same thing, only creative rather than deductive.  I have incorporated this daily task into my lifestyle.  It keeps me occupied while waiting in line or stuck in traffic.  In these situations turning a haiku over in my mind has a relaxing effect.  Having a daily haiku to write has also made me be more observant of the world around me, and more appreciative of the details.  The search for haiku moments is now ingrained in my subconscious.  My daily haiku keep my brain in shape.  They build my vocabulary, as I find myself consulting the dictionary every other day.

 

Every once in a while I will surprise myself with a good haiku; on those nights I go to bed very satisfied with the day's output.  As a result of having to produce one each day some are bound to be awful.  In these cases, I have to settle on something that won't be embarrassing and go to bed.  Each day has new hope however as I start over.  Each day's haiku has the potential to be my best.  I have stretches where ideas flow and good haiku appear day after day, and then I have weeks when I struggle.  There are nights when I can't go to bed because I don't have a haiku yet.  But then the tide turns and I surprise myself once again.

 

Haiku are meant to be experienced, not merely read.  So don't read the haiku like you're reading a novel.  Give each one a little bit of time.  Reread it a few times.  Experience the moment the haiku is trying to capture.  If you don't like it, move on.  I guarantee that there will be many you don't like.  But out of the hundreds of haiku, I hope you will also find one or two or a few that you do like, that mean something to you, that portray a moment you would like to hold in you mind, that you would like to repeat from time to time.

 

Happy hunting!

 

 

C.M.S.  -  1 JULY 2005

 

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