And then I made a picture.
The sound of silence
is all the instruction
You'll get
is all the instruction
You'll get
I call it incisive lens-based criticism of Kerouac's poem but you are welcome to consider it this picture that popped into his head after he read the poem which I think means the same thing.
Clearly, I love haiku, but they can also give me the giggles, especially when I recall The Fugs and "The National Teenage Haiku Contest" (on "It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest"):
ReplyDeleteThe mud elephant
Wading through the sea
Leaves no tracks
Now there's the Spirit of '68!
Mike
Gentlemen:
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of being pedantic, a proper Haiku consists of 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.
Kerouac actually developed a whole theory of American Haiku, which dropped the syllabic structure.
DeleteThree lines, paints a little picture.
Apparently the the syllabic structure makes more sense in Japanese for reasons which elude me.
That's because Japanese is mora-based, and a mora is sort of like a syllable, but not quite.
DeleteI learned about Haiku in high school, not while smoking dope and listening to jazz, hence my confusion.
DeleteThat said, I'm not surprised, as Kerouac clearly wasn't one to follow arbitrary rules...
Actually, to be really pedantic, I think you'll find that a *proper* haiku (that is, a Japanese one) is not divided into lines at all.
DeleteMike
Haiku
Deleteso many rules
sigh *
* I didn't write this, but remember it from high school. 8^)
Pedants' Corner, European Branch: My Japanese Japanese-poetry-writing wife tells me that haiku are *usually* but not necessarily written in three lines.
DeleteAn ultra-pedant replies: If you ask her again, see if she can explain the difference between the concept of "lines" (as understood in Western right-to-left written, metrical poetry) and "phases" in Japanese poetry. As with syllables and "mora", there's a similarity, but they're not the same thing. [In my understanding, which is not great].
DeleteMike
Mike, Do you have the Japanese term for 'phase' in this instance? So far I'm drawing a blank here at home.
DeleteSorry, typo for "phrases" (ditto left-to-right, not right-to-left!). Ignore me. Today is my day off from pedantry. Sundays, I am a "who cares?" sort of guy.
DeleteOn Sunday morning
Who reads the business section?
A nice cup of tea.
Mike