
A Call for the Elimination of Joke Haiku Production on the Internet (2001) - thristian
http://woozle.org/neale/papers/joke-haiku.html
======
r24y

        This article, I do declare,
        Makes a point that's as plain as it's fair.
        Let's all call a truce
        And end haiku use
        Or else I might strangle a bear.
    

\---------------

Now that that's out of the way...

I didn't agree with this, _until_ it got to the limerick part. I don't have
quite as much against haikus as the author, but in most (if not all)
situations a limerick would get the job done so much better.

~~~
coldpie
While I don't feel strongly about trivializing Haiku's grand traditions, I did
find myself in the same shoes as the author. What always struck me about joke-
haikus is that they're nothing more than a sentence with a couple line-breaks
in it. A haiku should use minimal words to convey a story or invoke a shared
memory or trigger your senses. The form is a part of the art: where and how
you place the breaks is meaningful and should contribute to the feeling you
want to convey. Instead, people think up a seventeen(-ish) syllable sentence
and place the line-breaks as appropriate. Ugh.

------
knodi123
I fail to see how it's not a perfect analogy to say that this is just like a
guy whining for an end to all internet meme images on the basis that
photography has a long artistic tradition and should not be debased.

I get it that "joke haiku" are low-effort imitations of a noble and ancient
art. So what? There's a place for low-effort dumb humor. That's okay. Your
noble and ancient haiku are still there, unharmed. There is no poetry currency
which is being devalued when cheap product floods the market.

~~~
mcguire
_Tweet!_ Failure of reply to take form of haiku. 12-yard penalty. Second down.

------
jstanley
"Joke Haiku are used by Pseudo-Intellectual Poseurs to imbue Banal and
Uninspired Quips with Undeserved Cachet."

The irony here clearly lost on the author.

------
gpvos

        I ate your web page.
        Forgive me. It was juicy
        and tart on my tongue.
    

(An HTTP 404 message on mit.edu from the early days of the web.)

~~~
waqf

      I have eaten
      the webpage
      that was on
      the server
    
      and which
      you were probably
      hoping
      to retrieve
    
      Forgive me
      it was juicy
      and tart
      on my tongue.
    

Similarly, I wish people would stop writing third-rate parodies. Swapping a
few words out from a famous song or poem to make it relate to your chosen
subject is also not a great artistic achievement.

~~~
leoc
> Swapping a few words out from a famous poems or song to make it relate to
> your chosen subject is also not a great artistic achievement.

It certainly can be, if the re-imagining and the juxtaposition created are
creative and surprising enough. But of course usually they aren't. Sturgeon
squared.

------
cantagi
I apologize, for writing joke Senryus, on the internet.

------
AshFurrow
Don't tell me what to do – I can write poetry and jokes however I want. Stop
pearl-clutching, ya nerd.

------
JoeAltmaier
Traditional Haiku must evoke a season. Most 'haiku-form' prose doesn't meet
the bar. Maybe we need another name?

~~~
gpvos
Senryu. (It's in the article.)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Cool!

------
wenham
This boils down to: "Stop doing this, you're not enjoying it right!".

------
logfromblammo
Imagine my distress, when I find that this is a lie:

    
    
      This is a haiku,
      Because this line has seven,
      And this line has five.
    

So now I must update it:

    
    
      Senryu is three lines,
      Seventeen syllables max,
      And knows no season.
    

You know, in barely related news, Dwarf Fortress now supports the invention
and spread of poetic forms in the world generator. I'm sure that any one of
those procedurally-generated forms would be acceptable for passing jokey-jokes
around the Internet.

~~~
pipoca
In fact, that isn't a senryu either.

Haiku and senryu count morae, not syllables. The mora is a unit of timing; a
short syllable is one mora and a long one is two morae. So 'tokyo', which is
two syllables, is counted as 4 morae since both 'o's are long. Similarly,
'Nippon' is counted as 4 morae - 'ni-p-po-n'.

Confusion about this is why English haiku tend to be so long: compare

    
    
        furu ike ya
        kawazu tobikomu 
        mizu no oto
    

to

    
    
        wind catches lily
        scatt'ring petals to the wind:
        segmentation fault

~~~
logfromblammo
~I am _shocked_ \--simply _shocked_ \--that poetic forms don't transfer
cleanly across languages.~

Iamb-out to declare that none of this _really_ matters, trochee? Anapest-
ilence upon the poetic purists!

------
TorKlingberg
I am surprised to see the word "hipster" in an article from 2001. It didn't
become a popular word until at least a few years later.

~~~
6502nerdface
Huh? I'm pretty sure "hipster" took off as a term back in the 1960s,
associated with the whole countercultural movement going on then.

Google's n-gram viewer agrees -- it starts appearing in books in the 1950s,
has some ups and downs, but was as popular as ever in 2000. [1]

[1]
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hipster&case_i...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hipster&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Chipster%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bhipster%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BHipster%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BHIPSTER%3B%2Cc0)

~~~
TorKlingberg
Sure, the word as existed since the 1940s, but was related to jazz and
different from the modern usage.

------
clentaminator
I agree. The double dactyl verse form
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl))
has far greater potential for comedy value.

~~~
gjm11

      Metrical-schmetrical
      Internet commenters
      Think writing haiku is
      All fun and games.
    
      Seventeen syllables,
      Cutless and seasonless?
      Pseudopoetical --
      Let's call them names!

