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RE: Do Haiku Need to be Three Lines?
I used to write haiku on a site called Allpoetry ... some of the haiku folks there would come close to cyber throttling over the use of the progressive. They trained me out of it, unless I was being all 'word-fancy' LOL. But there is an emphasis placed with the present continuous that is true. I guess it depends if you are aiming at ultimate simplicity or increased expression. Also I think there is something called the -te formation ... that would indicated if the writer intended a progressive. But I do not write or read Japanese and so that is foggy to me.
Haha oh I wouldn't fit in there well at all. I am more like the free-verse haiku poets in Japan and I don't do well with rules. I do often follow some traditional haiku rules in my own, but if I am told I have to, I will stubbornly refuse. I very much like recent trends in Japan (such as the woman I posted about recently who wrote the paper-rock-scissors haiku) that are introducing more common language to haiku (slang and whatnot) and striping away all the old rules. Poetry should evolve, not be stuck in the past. Typical stubborn yankee, eh? ;)
Yeah many Japanese haijin use the te form, and it would correspond more or less to the progressive. But the funny thing among many strict English haiku poets is that they often make up their own rules and claim they are the traditional ones, but disregard what the Japanese actually do with haiku.