The Haiku

Japanese poets often wrote about sadness, tragedies, or the love and beauty of nature. The most popular forms of Japanese poetry are most shorter compared with poems of other countries around the world. One short form of a Japanese poem is called a haiku. A haiku has 17 syllables, and three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Matsuo Basho, who lived in the 1600, was a brilliant haiku poet. He wrote beautiful poems which reflected the sprite of Zen, such as some of the ones below.