Thanks Julie for your words,
and in synthesis:

” Haiku does not tell you what to think or feel, but rather guides you through an experience.”

and doing this with not manipulative images : does exist a better way to understand?

–

a haiku – one
or two little brush strokes
with the painting inside

P.S…yugen, what a deep dimension…the unfathomable that the human mind can perceive, grasp, but not explain in words

Thanks, Alan!

Thanks for sharing, Michelle. I’ve never thought of haiku as the gentle joy in the space between thoughts, but I love it. That is where the magic happens in haiku, where the aha! connection forms, where the reader takes the hand of the haiku poet.

Hi Toni – What a lovely and thoughtful comment. As I was reading it, I found myself murmuring, yes, yes and these words came to mind: Haiku does not tell you what to think or feel, but rather guides you through an experience.

Little necessary addition, I forgot: the absence of ego and protagonism

I think we could say that haiku is the poetry form nearest to not visible part of life and to the its essence in its various realities and situations, but this it’s only a consideration a not a definition, as the fact that haiku is the poetry form that puts in motion various mind levels of the reader (conscious and inconscious) as no other form of poetry do: the most active poetry form for the reader or the listener

Instead of searching a definitive and exaustive definition for haiku -provided that it is possible- I think today may be more useful define what a haiku isn’t and doesn’t contain : affirmation, concept, idea, judgement, redundancy, orientering the reader, define in some way right-wrong, beautiful-ugly, correct-uncorrect, and and aspects similar to these inside the text, and so on
Without forgetting to make real clarity about some rethoric and not necessary parts: 5-7-5, obligation to kigo, zen presence…

““The shape of haiku is in the blank spaces.”
— Ellen Compton, author of Gathering Dusk”

Haiku is a lot like yoga, nirvana, blissful life, love, peace that arrives in the space between thoughts, to quote Eckhart Tolle. beautiful, Ellen!

This reminds me of one of my recent verses.

“total eclipse of the sun
I tiptoe the space of I
between thoughts

Michelle Beyers
Copyright © 12/14/20

Cheers to all!

Thank you so much, Bill. I didn’t realize that. I’ve amended the post to include your comment.

Julie,
I have DM’d you, check FB. :-)

Alan