Synopsis

The following post in it's earliest stages will lean heavily on information from 3 all poetry journals I had started when first venturing to conquer the haiku. It was the simplest form and such the easiest to get into. So I set my goal to write 100 haikus, and iterate along the way as I learned. That worked well I feel fairly confident with them now and it takes around 2 seconds to come up with one. I have no idea if it seems strange I had trouble with coming up with such a simple form in the first place that is that, however it is quite true that i sometimes spent an hour on my daily 5 haikus during the early stages of this challenge. Furthermore if you are interested in my continuing efforts in producing quality haiku they can be found here.

The names of the posts aformentioned are "A Thought on Self Learning Haiku", "Haiku: A History", and "Haiku 2: Basic Elements"

Introduction

Haiku seems to have originated during the 17th century. It was preceded by the poetic format, renga. Matsuo Basho who at the time was considered the master of renga. Renga was a collaborative effort which involved one writers responding to the last thing written with a format of 17 and 14 syllabic segments called "on" The tone of renga is witty/innovative/bantering.

here is a example of Renga (by Fujiwara no Teika, 13th century)

It was after Basho began to realize that renga was becoming lackluster and he began to focus on Verse 1: Hokku as a stand alone. One such example is

a later example which Basho used to change switch from a less apathetic tone.

Basho even went so far as to state that the above was the "poster-child" of the becoming era of haiku. The poem is referred to as "Old Pond".