Editor's Note: Here's something a little different for Axis readers, especially those who are poets or have an interest in poetry. Mankh (Walter E. Harris III), a poet and essayist is a long time friend and regular contributor to Axis of Logic. In the video below, he reads "Free Haiku" with impromptu drum at Inside/Out, at the Outdoor Extension of the Sachem Public Library in Holbrook, New York. Many readers may have heard of haiku but some may not be sure what the haiku form of poetry really is. So we provide the following excerpt from a longer discourse on the history and definition of this poetic form by Jane Reichhold published by the AH Poetry website. - LMB

Written for and first posted on the Shiki International Haiku Salon, April 16, 1996

"It is now generally agreed that the earliest poems were songs, prayers, and incantations to gods. One tentacle of the spread of poetry has been traced from Persia to India, up to China and over to Japan. Even before the written records in Japan (760 AD) people spoke tanka to gods and in praise of the reigning monarchy. Tanka, with its 5-7-5-7-7 sound syllable count, its lofty ancestry, its shortness and ease for recall, became the favorite poetical form of the Japanese Imperial Court. And thus, both reached their highest popularity and brilliance during the same centuries -- ninth to eleventh ...

"In those years -- 9th - 12th centuries -- when tanka was so fashionable, poets competing in contests revived an old Chinese form by linking tanka poems together in a novel way. The poem was "broken" in half so one author wrote the 5-7-5 part and another responded and finished the poem by adding his (mostly men did this though it was first done by a woman!) 7-7 part. Instead of stopping there, someone else wrote a new 5-7-5 poem to "answer" to the previous 7-7 link and they named the genre renga -- meaning linked elegance. This proved to be so much fun poets were soon writing poems of 1,000 and even 10,000 links ...

"Skipping to the present, one may ask what separates a haiku from any other short, light verse. The answers will be as varied and individual as are paths to a religious belief -- a metaphor that is not too far off as haiku writers easily admit to living the Way of Haiku (in an awareness of just this -- this moment) and in the Spirit of Haiku (to hold all things with reverence).

"In the beginning is the form. In Japanese a haiku is traditionally 5-7-5 sound syllables. All languages cannot duplicate this method of counting syllables so foreign language writers must decide to either follow the method by writing 5-7-5 syllables in their own language. However if they prefer to imitate the product, the translated Japanese haiku, their poems must consist of less words. In English we cannot have both method and translated product correct in one poem so each of us must choose one system or the other. Beginners (especially if better acquainted with Western poetry) often do well to follow the 5-7-5 discipline at first. Later, when they become comfortable with saying what they want said in the least words, as it is easier to switch to the shorter styled haiku in a natural movement. This does not mean that 5-7-5 haiku are beginners' work; many, many very good writers insist on remaining with the form scheme."

- Jane Reichhold, published
on the AH Poetry Website

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) reads "Free Haiku" at Inside/Out, Outdoor Extension, Sachem Public Library in Holbrook, NY - May, 2010

READ MANKH'S BIO, ESSAYS AND POETRY ON AXIS OF LOGIC