i agree Kris ~ when i first started experimenting with haiku ~ i nipped at the heels of my pruned words and they crawled inside the 5-7-5 pattern ~ i found the 5-7-5 rhythm especially settling ~ actually a form of meditation ~
i love to read the Japanese masters of the form ~ my favorites being Issa and Chiyo-ni ~ and the more i read of the masters ~ the more i sensed that the English 5-7-5 form just didn't fit the same rhythm.
The Japanese onji is just not equivalent to our English syllables ~ so what we end up with is a whole lot of information / perhaps almost two times what is found in a Japanese haiku ~ crammed into a form. Please understand this was my personal feel over time from reading and comparing.
I saw even more of this as i began to follow Japanese haiku writers online in English e.g. Lawrence Barrow ~ i love his haiku ~ but they are pure experience. And what strikes me most ~ the importance of painting an image that comes to life & experience ~ not syllable count.
In contrast, on twitter i found my compatriots cutting up sentences into 3 lines of 5-7-5 ~ awful sentences ~ sometimes 'ghetto' talk ~ and calling this haiku ~ its an embarrassment to the form ~
All of this to say ~ that i have adopted a freer 'form' of haiku that suits me and my sense of rhythm (usually around 10 -11 syllables ) ~ as well as a feel for the deeper truths of 'form' ~ i want to read more Japanese haiku writers who write in English ~ i hope to understand more about the way the pieces or lines interact ~ e.g. the opposing elements within the haiku communicating ~ the surprise or twist ~ the more subtle elements of Japanese poetry ~ i hope this explains my respect for Japanese poets ~ and why i have abandoned the strict 5-7-5 form ~
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