The Tricycle Haiku Contest
In every issue, the quarterly Buddhist magazine Tricycle publishes a winning haiku from its ongoing monthly haiku contest. The poem appears alongside a column written by the contest’s judge, poet and author Clark Strand. This season’s haiku-adjacent column includes the following bit, about one theory on the nature of haiku:
The Japanese haiku critic Kenkichi Yamamoto (1907–1988) believed that the best haiku strike a balance between humor and existential isolation. “Loneliness in life and the comical elements of life are two sides of the same coin,” he wrote. As a genre of literature, haiku thrives on the flip of that coin — the small element of uncertainty that challenges our ordinary understanding of the world.
I hadn’t realized there were such things as haiku critics (!). I also like the idea of loneliness and humor being related somehow.
Read the Spring 2024 winning haiku here. And enter the monthly contest here. (The next round must include the word “turnip.”)
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Beet! My son yells
At a drawing of a turnip
Exactly, I say
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Just like calligrapher/brush character painter is a profession and discipline in Japan, I'd lean towards 'scholar/practitioner' being potentially more apt terms for people who are considered notable figures in haiku like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamamoto_Kenkichi - wikipedia calls him a literary critic, he also married a haiku poet.
There are prime-time tv shows in Japan with current known literary celebrities who write and edit and guide other practitioners at applying the art/craft of haiku - some of the more interesting aspects are the insistence that a word or concept indicating the season is always included, there should be a specific 'linking' between the second and third sections (a 'leap' is the term attributed to the poet Basho IIRC,) and that the 5-7-5 format is entirely arbitrary, mostly just considered useful/pleasing for display/presentation - violating that format is considered risky and there's definitely an unspoken cap, but flaunting a lack of adherence to the 'rules' is when you're considered to reach true greatness.
The composition is very singular and solitary and subjective, unlike other more generally agreed upon or participatory art forms. The modern ones I'm exposed to balance brevity and melodrama and less instances of humor than... wistfulness?
(It's also somewhat lost in the shuffle that the article presenting the winning haiku contains no explanation in relation to it being in reference to the word 'tricycle', but I can guess it's the context of that being considered a seasonal word that maybe there's a connection to being early in the year and parenting and youth and children...)
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