Living with haiku …

… or haiku: The Millions : 21st Century Butterfly, 19th Century Net: Fourteen Years in Haiku. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As the years pass, I have departed increasingly from the elementary-school form. First I dispensed with the obligation to include a seasonal reference in the poem. Then I jettisoned syllable counts for each line. Although since 1999 I’ve annually made a booklet of each year’s haiku and sent it to friends, most recently I’ve been sharing these poems daily on the internet. Facebook and Twitter made my line breaks look precious rather than effortless, which spurred me to let go of the requirement that a haiku be a three-line poem at all.

This essay displays much wisdom..