Wolfkus
Introduction
Wolfku, noun; a short, as a rule seventeen-syllable, poem that is part epiphany, part aphorism, and part haiku; derivation: Ulf Wolf Haiku.
Some time ago, I grew very interested haiku. Initially, because these short gems struck me as the perfect match for Twitter — a marriage made in digital heaven, as it were. Besides, how hard could it be to come up with a seventeen-syllable poem.
As I normally do when a more than fleeting interest alights on something, I read several books on the subject (that this time included Higginson and Harter’s wonderful The Haiku Handbook) and from there proceeded to immerse myself in several well-known haiku masters, such as Bashō, Buson, Issa, Shiki, et al.
Meanwhile, I began trying my hand at these darlings, initially strictly adhering to the five-seven-five syllable format, which, I soon came to find out (from online self-proclaimed haiku gurus and such), was quite a crude adaptation of that principle seeing that Japanese syllables do not necessarily correspond to English syllables (which are, by said expert reckoning, quite unwieldy by comparison). Also, reading a lot of (published and respected) English language haiku I soon realized that both the five-seven-five and the seventeen-syllable “rules” had long since been ditched by the better haiku poets.
