A lot of people are stuck on the idea of 5-7-5 as the primary definition of what a haiku is. But those numbers come nowhere close to a real definition.

What’s more important than the numbers is the feel of the poem. Anyone who speaks both English and Japanese well and has read haiku in both languages can tell you that the English language, due to its extreme differences from Japanese, needs to follow a different set of guidelines to capture the feel of the haiku.

For example, 5-7-5 in Japanese represents a flow of short to long to short. Asymmetrical haiku also exist, but there are typically two short segments and one long segment. This concept is an integral part of the haiku, and shouldn’t change no matter what language it is written in. However, one needs to consider the features of a language before deciding exactly how to implement this flow. English is made of longer syllables laden with piles of consonants and vowel combinations, and the language thus uses fewer syllables to transmit information. It should be clear that an English haiku can achieve completion with fewer than 17 syllables. My haiku typically contain ten to fourteen.

One must consider the words available in a language as well. Many times I have been frustrated trying to translate my English haiku about coffee into Japanese. The Japanese word コーヒー　is far more inconsiderate than its English counterpart and tends to push other words out. Once, I eliminated the word from the Japanese translation. The poem actually better captured the feel of the original without that word because I was better able to preserve the flow and the overall image I had originally created. In order to preserve the flow and the image in a haiku translation, reversing the order, changing the words, and changing the structure of a poem are all valid options.

Poems are always shaped by the language in which we write them. I hope you have begun to see how this effect is especially evident in the unique and difficult-to-emulate haiku.