Haiku You

As part of our “Lasting Impressions” exhibition of Japanese prints from the ASU Art Museum collection, you’ll find a haiku station in the gallery, where visitors are invited to write their own haiku and leave them on shelves for others to enjoy.

A refresher course (in case, like us, you haven’t written one since the 4th grade): Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry with a distinctive pattern: 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second, and 5 again in the third line.

Here’s an example, by Japanese poet Kijo Murakami:

First autumn morning
The mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face

We dropped by the haiku station yesterday to see what people have been writing. Here are three we particularly enjoyed:

A break from the sun
And perhaps discovery
Bring me here each week

Raining outside wet
The thunder shakes my heart now
Dogs at home shaking

The heat will soon break
so much depends on weather
the heat will return

And one more favorite, from someone who signed his name Linus:

Haiku is easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator