4.1 Read: About Sense of Place Through Description

4.7 Haiku

Another example of literature that connects to nature is a traditional Japanese haiku.  It is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasize simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression.

A haiku was traditionally written in the present tense and focused on associations between images. There was a pause at the end of the first or second line, and a “season word," or kigo, specified the time of year.

As the form has evolved, many of these rules—including the 5/7/5 practice—have been routinely broken. However, the philosophy of haiku has been preserved: the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of colorful descriptive language to create images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/haiku-poetic-form

Look at the following haiku and see if you can note what they all have in common. Consider both the content and the structure. 

Answer the questions on haikus in your Learning Guide Part A:  4.7 Haiku.  Then, again go outside and observe what you see in nature. Whether it is seeing a spectacular sunset, witnessing a severe weather change, or noticing a beautiful pattern or colour in nature, sometimes a photograph can't catch your reaction to the moment, or a smell or feeling. In your learning guide Part B, write two different haikus about a moment in nature you experience.