A few months ago, there was a power issue. We had lost power one day due to a storm (I suppose) and regained it a few hours later. Next day came and just a few hours into it we lost it again! I was a bit frustrated, but instead of complaining on Facebook as many might, I instead grabbed my pen and wrote this:

This kind of observational haiku always makes me think of Jack Kerouac, and I'm sure I was inspired by him in writing them. When most people hear his name they think of the classic beat novel On the Road. What many don't realize is he was a big fan of haiku. He enjoyed the Japanese poems (even tried his hand at translating some of them, though I don't think he spoke Japanese) and wrote many of his own in English. He was very outspoken on how in English they should be similar but different from the Japanese form. He included some of his haiku in later books and wrote thousands more privately, some of which were collected and published in 2003 in Book of Haikus. The book is just fantastic. I think this collection is a hidden gem and I was really inspired by it many years ago when I discovered it.

The one above kind of blurs the line between haiku and senryū, as do many of Kerouac's. The line has always been a bit blurry, but the general guideline has always been that haiku are about nature and senryū are about human folly. I don't think the distinction is all that useful. At least since Shiku (c1900) there has been a free-verse haiku movement that doesn't require season words or even nature reference, giving us at least two definitions of haiku: short poems about any manner of things and short poems that follow a 5/7/5 structure and are about nature. People argue about these things, but I think being strict about the definition or category is a waste of time. One of my all time favorite Japanese haiku poets is Santōka and most of his haiku were also without nature reference or "correct" syllable count.

Anyway, power was finally restored later that day and we haven't lost it again since, so the power company must have patched up whatever was causing the trouble.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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