Mission: I will publish at least one new haiku to the April Arts Marathon website each day in April.
Message: Haiku is an evolving form. The rule you learned requiring 17 syllables in three 5-7-5 lines has been abandoned by most writers of haiku. The focus is still on brevity, on surprise, on calling attention to the hidden aspects of everyday things. Readers of haiku are welcome to interpret the poem in light of their own experiences—if you find more than the poet expressed or intended, good for you! Haiku (the word is singular or plural) don’t preach, don’t reason. Look for wordplay, for connections between one line and the next. They are simply the writer’s response to a moment. There is a lot of talk these days about The Current Moment, and this CASP fundraiser is a part of that.
gasping for breath
the finish line?
hard to say
The above haiku was inspired by the presence of ‘CASP’ in the preceding paragraph, and your complete understanding of it depends somewhat on your having just read that paragraph. But if you had not, and instead took it to be about a struggle to complete a race, you would not be mistaken. And if it brought to mind raising a teenager, facing the umpteenth snowfall of the season, or the decreasing lung power you associate with aging, you are also right.
In 2024, I wrote a haiku every day; last year, I let them come as they might. April is a good month for haiku—not only is it National Poetry Month, it is also the time of the reawakening of the natural world, the classical source of haiku subjects. I hope the brief interruption in your daily routines will reward you (in the way of the butterfly effect) for sponsoring CASP’s mission.