418 lines
20 KiB
Markdown
418 lines
20 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: A Call for the Complete Elimination of Joke Haiku Production on the Internet
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---
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<p style="font-style: italic;">
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This was written by Paul H. Henry. His web site is no longer on-line.
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I feel this is important enough to preserve for future aspiring jokesters.
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I have preserved all links and tried to reproduce the formatting in the
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style of my pages. I could not stomach the all-caps headings, and
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capitalized them more or less by whimsy.
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</p>
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-----
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<p style="text-align: right;">
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Sunday, May 27, 2001
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</p>
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A Proposal to the Internet Community
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------------------------------------
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Dear Readers,
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Since the Internet first extended its reach into the popular
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consciousness—and, truth be told, for quite a while before that—a
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plague has spread throughout the Internet community, propagating
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itself viruslike through the Web and into our e-mail boxes. Like the
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worst infections, it started out innocuously and became malignant so
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gradually that most of us have yet to realize how detrimental it truly
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is.
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I refer, of course, to the joke haiku.
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Like a hideous genetic mutation in a 1950s-era grade-B science fiction
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film, these seventeen-syllable poems have been borrowed from classical
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Japanese culture by well-meaning would-be humorists and distorted so
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completely from their original intended use that they threaten to
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permanently warp our capacity for humorous expression, if they are not
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stopped.
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I therefore make this proposal to you, my fellow Internet enthusiasts:
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that as of right now, we agree to completely eliminate the production
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and propagation of joke haiku on the Internet. Don't write them,
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don't forward them to your friends, don't even acknowledge their
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existence. Only through concerted effort can we stamp out this menace
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completely.
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I list my reasons for this drastic step below.
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It is not my intention to hold any individual people up for ridicule,
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so all of the joke haiku below, with a few exceptions noted in the
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text, are my own invention (it wasn't exactly hard to do, which as
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I'll explain below is part of the problem). Those who wish to see
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real-world examples of the qualities I describe have
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[no](http://www.barhaiku.20m.com/)
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[shortage](http://www.igs.net/~mtr/haiku-reviews/)
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[of](http://www.planetquake.com/que/haiku/haiku.htm)
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[places](http://www.plastic.com/users.pl?nick=HaikuGuy)
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[to](http://www.twinkiesproject.com/haiku.html)
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[go](http://pemtropics.mit.edu/~jcho/editorial/)
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-----
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Joke Haiku are Too Easy To Write.
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---------------------------------
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I've long lamented the way rhyme and meter have largely fallen into
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disuse in modern poetry, not because free verse is inherently inferior
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to the sonnet or other forms of rhymed, metered poetry—it isn't—but
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because it's convinced a lot of extremely untalented people that they
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can write poetry too. After all, how hard can it be to write 20 short
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lines that don't even have to rhyme?
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Such is the sad fate of the haiku, that quiet, moving Japanese
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literary device that's become abused beyond recognition by two-bit
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Internet comedians and hacks. We all learned in second grade that a
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haiku consists of seventeen syllables arranged into three unrhymed
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lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. Because that's
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all most of us remember about the haiku, it's used by many, many
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people as a device for coming up with pithy nuggets of humorous
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wisdom.
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The problem is that it doesn't take a genius to come up with seventeen
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syllables about anything. For example:
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> Lame flying saucers
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> You can see the fishing line
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> What a bad movie.
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It took me all of about ten seconds to write that. Here, I'll do
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another one:
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> Where's my other sock?
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> It disappeared in the wash
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> How did that happen?
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I hardly feel that these two stupid poems mark me as being clever or
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witty in any way, yet I defy anyone to show that they're any less
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interesting or worthy of praise and/or laughter than any other joke
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haiku—the point being that if I can crank out two serviceable joke
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haiku in less than a minute, they're fairly useless as a measure of
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humor ability.
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What gets me is that by and large the people who create and appreciate
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joke haiku seem to be the same kind of people who would sneer at the
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sub-Ogden Nash doggerel that newspaper readers send in to be published
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next to the Junior Jumble, yet their own well-loved poems aren't
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appreciably different in any material way, besides not including
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pitiful stabs at creating a workable rhyme.
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Joke Haiku Debase a Respected Japanese Art Form going back Hundreds of Years.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Like a tattoo of Japanese kanji characters on the ankle of a pierced
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hipster who has no idea what they mean, haiku is a sad example of the
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conversion of important aspects of Eastern culture into status symbols
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for those in the know.
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[Basho](http://www.big.or.jp/~loupe/links/ehisto/ebasho.shtml) and
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[Issa](http://webusers.xula.edu/dlanoue/issa/)
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didn't devote their lives to the perfection of an art form so you could
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use it to crack wise about how your cat box smells when you don't clean it
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enough. Think about it.
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Joke Haiku Don't Respect the Haiku Form.
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----------------------------------------
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It may come as a surprise to the vast majority of would-be comedians
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on the Net, most of whom don't know haiku from Hai Karate, that
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there's much more to haiku than simply stringing seventeen syllables
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together.
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For starters, the vast majority of joke haiku writers aren't writing
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haiku at all, they're writing senryu, whether they know it or not.
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One of the most important aspects of classical haiku is the kigo, or
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season word, which indicates the season in which the poem is set.
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Kigo can express the season directly or through implication. For
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example, many Japanese haiku refer to cherry blossoms, which are a
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sign of spring. Kigo in English-language American haiku might include
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the start of Daylight Saving Time (for spring), school letting out
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(summer), football season (fall), and Christmas (winter). The concept
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of kigo is vitally important to haiku poets, many of whom compile
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lists of appropriate words. Senryu, by comparison, generally follow
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the conventions of haiku but don't require kigo.
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Haiku are about nature and seasons. Without the kigo, it's a senryu.
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Really.
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The second concept universally ignored by joke haiku writers is the
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cutting. More prevalent in Japanese haiku than in other languages,
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the cutting is a word or other construction that serves to
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conceptually separate the first or second segment of the haiku from
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the remainder of the poem. Jennifer Jensen points to
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[a fine example of cutting](http://www.peavine.com/haiku/cuttingwords.html),
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from the 17th century haiku master Basho:
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> Kutabirete
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> yado karu koro ya
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> fuji no hana
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which in English is translated:
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> When worn out
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> And seeking an inn:
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> Wisteria flowers!
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The cutting word above is the Japanese ya, which doesn't translate to
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English well; it more or less signals a break in thought,
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transitioning the reader from Basho's fatigue during his journey to
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the implied joy he feels when spotting the beautiful wisteria. In
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Robert Aitken's translation, the cutting word is expressed as a colon.
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The cutting is a vital part of haiku, transforming one poem into two,
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which reflect each other while retaining their independence from one
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another. By comparison, joke haiku writers typically bull through to
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the end at maximum speed as though they're trying to get home before
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WWF Thursday Night Smackdown starts:
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> Cutting my toenails
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> I cut too deep and I bleed
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> all over the rug.
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Ironically, the one rule to which every joke haiku does
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conform—seventeen syllables in three metrical units of five, seven,
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and five—isn't even a hard and fast rule in English-language haiku.
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Because of significant differences in the ways syllables are treated
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in Japanese and Western languages, many non-Japanese haiku poets
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choose to vary the number of syllables and even the number of lines,
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in order to more accurately convey the spirit of the haiku.
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Joke Haiku are used by Pseudo-Intellectual Poseurs to imbue Banal and Uninspired Quips with Undeserved Cachet.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I hasten to point out that not all joke haiku writers are
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pseudo-intellectual poseurs. Indeed, if you write joke haiku, the
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fact that you've read this far indicates an open-mindedness of which
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you should be proud. Yet it can hardly be denied that many, many
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people use the haiku form to dress up the most mundane, unfunny
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ruminations imaginable in pseudo-profound wordplay to make them appear
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to be timeless observations on society and humankind spawned by a
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truly talented wordsmith.
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For proof we need look no further than [the bizarre proliferation of
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Web pages devoted to haiku about Spam](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=spam-haiku),
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the processed luncheon meat. There are thousands upon thousands of
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Spam haiku on pages all over the Web, some of which have even been
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collected into [a book](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060952784/o/qid=991000100/sr=2-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_1/002-6531517-3988017),
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and all of which say essentially the same
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thing: Spam is bad food. We need nearly two thousand Web pages to
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convey this idea?
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Of course, the fact that this idea is conveyed through mock-profound
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poetry helps conceal the subtle contempt that the authors feel towards
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the kind of people who eat Spam, which they probably bought at
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Wal-Mart along with their Velveeta, Wonder Bread, and Garth Brooks
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CDs. In some lame-ass flyover state like Arkansas or Nebraska. Not
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Our People, in other words. Why, they've probably never even heard of
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haiku.
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Which is not to suggest that all joke haiku are about making fun of
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the yokels. Far from it. People write joke haiku about art, music,
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current events, and many other different subjects. But at the heart
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of all of them is the fact that the author wrote seventeen syllables
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of unrhymed doggerel and borrows the cachet of a traditional Japanese
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art form to pass it off as inspired quirkiness.
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Consider this example:
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> Milk after five months
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> in my refrigerator
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> tastes just horrible.
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The point being made here is that sour milk tastes bad. Yet if I were
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to post it to a joke haiku bulletin board, or scribble it on a napkin
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at Denny's at 2:30 am and pass it around to my
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very-pleased-with-their-own-wit friends, this singularly uninteresting
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observation would garner laughs and praise and make me look like a
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very droll person indeed.
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The insidious danger of the joke haiku, therefore, is that the
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distinction between the insightful and the banal becomes blurred by
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the unearned credibility that accrues to it.
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So far we've explored the ways in which joke haiku are an affront to,
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respectively, cleverness, classical Japanese poets, the haiku form
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itself, and genuine observational humor. All of these might be
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forgivable to some degree if not for the final and most important
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point of all:
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Joke Haiku are Never Funny.
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---------------------------
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"Never" might be an exaggeration, but the vast majority of joke haiku
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posted to the Internet just aren't funny. Short enough to take the
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form of a simple sentence, the typical joke haiku is just that: a
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brief observational sentence about some random aspect of life. When
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shorn of its haiku form, its true banality emerges.
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Consider the example I posted above:
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> Milk after five months
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> in my refrigerator
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> tastes just horrible.
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This poem is easily the equal of any number of joke haiku posted or
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e-mailed anywhere on the Internet. Yet look at what happens when I
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remove the line breaks:
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> Milk after five months in my refrigerator tastes just horrible.
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What once might have elicited satisfied chuckles from joke haiku
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aficionados becomes an excruciatingly average observation that
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illuminates nothing other than the author's slovenly approach to
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foodstuff maintenance. Of course, you don't have to take my word for
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it; try it on any joke haiku you encounter and see if it retains even
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a fraction of its whimsy.
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-----
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Haiku writers, don't despair. I do not seek to tear down without
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building up in its place. I propose that joke haiku writers and
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aficionados shift their allegiance to a form that I consider to be far
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superior for its purposes: the limerick.
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Where once limericks were unimaginably popular in the mass media, they
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have of late fallen upon hard times, replaced by joke haiku and other
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inferior vehicles. I propose nothing less than the wholesale
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resurrection of the limerick as the poetic form of choice for humorous
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musings on the Internet and elsewhere. Our task will not be easy, but
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through will and determination we can make it a reality.
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There are several reasons why limericks are superior to haiku for the
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purposes of humor transmission:
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Limericks are Inherently Goofy.
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-------------------------------
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As Carl Kasell and the rest of the folks at the NPR quiz show
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[Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me](http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/)
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know, nothing says "serious" less than a limerick.
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Nobody ever wrote a love poem in limerick form. There's a reason why
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[If](http://www.duke.edu/~bub/if.htm) and
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[The Charge of the Light Brigade](http://eserver.org/poetry/light-brigade.html)
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were not written as limericks.
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Haiku, on the other hand, is a universally recognized art form and
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gains nothing from being trivialized. Whereas once there might have
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been some humor value in taking something as serious as haiku and
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transforming it into a vehicle for goofy doggerel, that value was
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surely lost long ago through endless repetition.
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Limericks provide a Frisson Of Naughtiness that is Ideally Suited to Jokery.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Even the staid Encyclopaedia Britannica observes that limericks are
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"[frequently ribald](http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=49443&tocid=0)."
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The low reputation of the limerick is such that even the most G-rated
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limerick suggests a dirty joke through its form and rhythm alone. And
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of course if telling a dirty joke is your intention, there's no
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shortage of possibilities regarding the genitalia of the girl from
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Regina, or the sexual proclivities of men who drive trucks. The jokes
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practically suggest themselves.
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Limericks have No Proud Tradition to Debase.
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--------------------------------------------
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Real haiku can prompt a transcendental experience, as their spare form
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and rigid structure transport you to a florid Japanese garden in the
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17th century, or a snow-blasted forest miles from civilization.
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Limericks just conjure up some ne'er-do-well in a Dublin pub, his
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breath marinating you in cheap alcohol as he regales you with made-up
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tales of the latest fair lassie to grace his stinking bed. Limericks
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have never pretended to be anything but a wink and a nod and are
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therefore an ideal medium for such inspired foolishness.
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Limericks Take some Thought to Write.
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-------------------------------------
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Any moderately intelligent person could easily toss off several joke
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haiku a minute, and they'd all be neither better nor worse than the
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average specimens on the Internet. Limericks, however, require that
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attention be paid to meter and that acceptable rhyming words be found.
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Whereas the ability to write a "good" joke haiku only marks one as not
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being in a coma, the ability to write a good limerick sets one apart
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as a creative force.
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Consider this haiku about commuting:
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> Sitting in my car
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> I watch the time tick away
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> This traffic sure sucks.
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Pedestrian and boring, it took all of ten seconds to write. To write
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a limerick on the same subject, one must work much harder:
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> Nothing's worse, there can be no dispute,
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> Than my everyday average commute.
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> In my car long I sit.
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> I just might throw a fit
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> If I can't find an alternate route.
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Okay, so it's not the best limerick that's ever been written, but in a
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way that's exactly my point. This stuff's not easy to do. Do it well
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and you'll be recognized as a witty person.
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(Now, if you *really* want to impress people, try writing a few
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[double dactyls](http://www.stinky.com/dactyl/).)
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A Limerick Provides the Writer with More Structural Freedom with which to Convey A Point.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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The best haiku boil down to their barest essence a multitude of
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feelings, perceptions, and truths about the world and the things and
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people that live on it. Joke haiku, on the other hand, are all about
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rustling up a cheap laugh or two. Now, I do not mean to denigrate the
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cheap laugh; indeed, much of my success in social circles depends on
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it. But I would suggest that the restrictive form of the haiku, while
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ideally suited to the minimalist observations of classical poets, may
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not be the best vehicle for conveying humor. The seventeen-syllable
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limit, which is further restricted by the two line breaks, just
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doesn't provide the writer with enough room to convey anything but the
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most basic of ideas.
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By comparison, the poetic possibilities available just within the
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strictures of the "There once was a \_\_\_\_\_ from \_\_\_\_\_" form are nearly
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limitless. Why, one could fill a book with verse about the residents
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of [Nantucket](http://www.nantucketonline.com) alone.
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-----
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The time has come to take drastic measures. I therefore call upon
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every member of the Internet community to take this solemn pledge:
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<p style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">
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"I PLEDGE NEVER TO WRITE ANOTHER JOKE HAIKU, AND NEVER TO PARTICIPATE
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IN THE PROMOTION OR PROPAGATION OF JOKE HAIKU ON THE INTERNET."
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</p>
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Take the pledge and liberate yourself from the self-imposed strictures
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that limit your creative freedom. Join others who have pledged to
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improve themselves and the Internet sites and e-mail boxes they love.
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If we are to be successful, dear readers, it will be through your
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efforts and determination. Tell your friends about this proposal and
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urge them to pitch in. With your help, we can look forward to a joke
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haiku-free Internet.
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