Haiku Demystified
Haibun: The Joy and Journey of Poetic Engineering, part 4
Hybrid Style Haibun (Haiku with Tanka)
By Pravat Kumar Padhy
Lynx, a prominent journal published such type of literary pieces under the editorship of Jane and Werner Reichhold during 1997–2003. Goldstein (1983) one of the pioneer tanka writers has also attempted such style. Larry Kimmel’s Evening Walk (1996) is one of the hybrid pieces with alternates prose with tanka and haiku. Linda Jeannette Ward is remarkable in portraying hybrid genre embedding prose with both tanka and haiku indicating a transitional phase of some haibun writers to writing tanka prose. Sue & Kit’s Angels by Catherine Mair and Patricia Prime is one of the memorable hybun mixed with tanka and haiku.
Similarly, Janice M. Bostok used haiku and in her tanka collection Stepping Stone. Katherine Samuelowicz’s master piece tanka prose, Morocco May 2004 presents a narration with prose poem (no punctuation) interspersed with a tanka and an emotional haiku at the end.
Stanley Pelter in The Short Straw and in a hill blows up (first published in & Y Not? in 2006) used both haiku and tanka. In recent past, Suraj Nanu in his tanka prose, Mother of Sunsets, Vicki Miko in First day includes both haiku and tanka.
Morocco May 2004
By Katherine Samuelowicz
high from a house roof in the kasbah i look at snow covered mountains at a fertile green oasis neatly separated with a clean chirurgical cut from yellowy brown desert at kapusta cabbage heads in neat rows among date palmsin Chellah on Roman columns nasze bociany Polish storks and nasze malwy our hollyhocks against façades of palaces with their intricate carved wood stucco and tilework i nasze przydrozne maki and our red poppies among graves of rulers long dead
in Zagora where a road sign proclaims 52 days to Timbuktu (by camel) a flock of girls runs from school freshly starched school uniforms bright smiling eyes hair in plaits laughing wanting to know where we’re from asking for bonbons
i think about my father
my hair in long plaits
walking together
through a pine forest
all things i was to besilence all eyes on images from Abu Ghraib prison on the TV screen mint tea and coffee getting cold in my mind’s eye i see a sunny day in Brisbane among thousands of people
a young girl
First published in Yellow Moon 16, Summer 2004
in a wheelchair
walking for peace
a hill blows up
by Stanley Pelter
as he dozes
pianos in the air
tip sideways
played by black gloved hands
& a white gul
a hill blows up for no apparent reason
the huffpuffs
First published in & Y Not?, 2006
put another
in its place
Micro Haibun
There have been many experiments of writing micro haibun, one or two lines prose with haiku at the end. The micro haibun such as North Pasture Framed by Kitchen Window By Larry Kimmel (2003), A Holiday (Edward H. Potthast) by Diana Webb, Without A Disclaimer By Jeffrey Winke, To Answer Forthrightly by Jeffrey Winke, sunday dinner by Roberta Beary, Food Fair by w.f. owen and others are innovative in their expressions.
On the Buddha Trail by Geethanjali Rajan (Café Haiku, 2023) comprises four microhaibun. The Pivot by Jeffrey Woodward is a verse envelope haibun with one-line prose.
Without a Disclaimer
By Jeffrey Winke
With the perfection found in carefree abandon, the pair of mismatched cotton socks – one red, one robin’s egg blue – fit her feisty, fashion-forward sensibility that no one this close to the muddy Mississippi is ever credited with possessing, not without a small-print disclaimer as long as a teenage basketball player’s kitchen-doorway notched growth chart.
she
defines
cute
One-line haibun by Jim Kacian is unique. He introduced ‘One-bun’ with one-line prose ending with a one-liner (monoku). Alan Summers, following this idea, introduced ‘Monobun’ with one-line prose or single-paragraph prose with 3-line haiku.
Where I Leave Off , one-line haiku and haibun by Jim Kacian.
An electronic version based on the first printing/1e druk maart 2010, ISBN 978- 94-90607-02-9
Driftwood
By Jim Kacian
its sap leached away carrying the endless waters, burns now with a noise-
less firepleasantly drunk fireflies come out of the moon
Prose Section and Experimentation
The prose comprises wide topics such as short stories with a lighter tone, biographical episodes, travel writing, conversations, prose-poems, diaries etc. The prose section of haibun has witnessed some interesting twists as far as its content, poetic narration and appropriate substitutions are concerned. A Rude Awakening by Michael Roach is written in a formal letter format which is unique in literary sense.
Some experimented to write poetry in place of conventional prose section with a haiku at the end. Jeffrey Harpeng’s What It Is, Dru Philippou’s Counterpoise, Shloka Shankar’s The Twins published in the September 19 edition of Haibun Today are some of the innovative haibun.
The prose section often is characterized by ‘dialogue-based’ narration such as Miriam Sagan’s Last Words, Michael McClintock’s Interval, Beverley George’s Sticky Fingers, Ray Rasmussen’s How Is It . . . Joy Ride by Peter Newton and others.
Another experimentation in prose section is typical repetitions and are seen in Bob’s Small Journey Meditations, Diana’s Window, Stanley Pelter’s bialystok: song is to . Adelaide B. Shaw also repeats the first two words ‘Still awake …’ in haibun A Good Night’s Sleep to start with the sentence in the prose section. Roberta Beary also does a lot of experimentation of writing prose and repeating word or word phases.
What It Is
By Jeffrey Harpeng
for Lochlan 29/1/08 – 6/4/08
How early it is to be so tired.
A machine reminds him when to breathe.
It whispers life is brief as a sigh.Today his mother bathed him
and sis tickled and teased with what they’d do
when he grows up.One eye heavily winks
as if he knows a wicked joke.
He’ll tell you later.The way his hand wraps
around dad’s finger, loosely as if:
what more is there to know about love.night fishing
ripples from the line
scatter the stars
Small Journey Meditations
By Bob Lucky
stepping out walking home stepping out walking home
stepping out walking home stepping out walking home
stepping walking stepping walking stepping walkinghome the smell of coffee in my mustache
To be continued
Cafe Haiku 
Thank you for such a deeply researched article. Very enlightening.
Vidya Venkatramani
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