The key to haiku is understatement when describing our experiences. -- Peter Brady
An understatement, the opposite of hyperbole, is a rhetorical device by which a "particular quality of a person, object, emotion, or situation is downplayed or presented as being less than what is true to the situation."
In his 2001 dissertation, titled Haiku in Britain: Theory, Practice, Context, Martin Lucas emphasizes:
Stripping out imaginative excesses and rhetorical flourishes is an ascetic practice which appears, for many, to go against the grain. The Western poetic palate tends to crave exotic flavours, whereas haiku is as understated as a bowl of boiled white rice. What succeeds in haiku, what startles, is honesty rather than innovation. As in Cor van den Heuvel’s
hot night
turning the pillow
to the cool side
What moves us is the unifying power of shared experience, presented so as to be immediately accessible. It is this quality of naked awareness which is the value, and the difficulty, of the art (pp. 346-347).
For example:
school bus
the same fertility symbol
at the driver's neck
Kokako, 21, 2014
Cynthia Rowe
In this deceptively simple and understated haiku, what's left unsaid is emotionally more significant than what's said. Just take the time to think about the following questions:
1) what's on the mind of the driver who drives kids to school daily?
2) what's on the mind of the narrator who just found out the "same" "fertility symbol" at the driver's neck?
Another example,
New Year's eve --
the wind returns
my old hat
Ardea, 5, 2015
Lavana Kray
L1 establishes the thematic context while a humorous twist in L3 not only provides a "scent link" (in Basho's sense of the phrase) to L1, but also prepares the reader to usher in the new year.
A understated haiku with an aesthetic focus on the "hai."
To conclude today's post, I would like share a haiku sequence , written in an understated tone, about this (supposedly happy) Thanksgiving long weekend:
As Usual
a cacophony
of horns and tire screeches
Thanksgiving trip
quiet dinner
except the clicking
of chopsticks
leftovers
between us all that
remains
Chen-ou
Added: Three Hundred and Fifty-Third Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary
in memory of Patrick Henry who was known for his 1775 revolutionary war cry: Give me liberty or give me death
Covid curbs
blank sheets of paper waving
in the twilight dark
FYI: The Week Magazine, December 3, 2022: Patrick Henry in China
"Give me liberty or give me death." Protesters in cities throughout China were actually chanting Patrick Henry's revolutionary war cry from 1775 this week, as tens of thousands poured into the streets in defiance of the authoritarian regime in Beijing. The demonstrators, mostly young, chanted "We don't want emperors!" and held up blank pieces of paper to symbolize their inability to speak freely.
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