Why Haiku?

Many people ask why I write in Haiku or why I love Haiku so much.  To answer these questions I would like to briefly introduce Haiku - this Japanese style of short verse, and then give my reasons.  

---

Brief history of Haiku...
A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression.
Haiku began in thirteenth-century Japan as the opening phrase of renga, an oral poem, generally 100 stanzas long, which was also composed syllabically. The much shorter haiku broke away from renga in the sixteenth-century, and was mastered a century later by Matsuo Basho, who wrote this classic haiku:

An old pond!
A frog jumps in--
the sound of water.

Haiku was traditionally written in the present tense and focused on associations between images. There was a pause at the end of the first or second line, and a "season word," or ​kigo,​ specified the time of year. As the form has evolved, many of these rules—including the 5/7/5 practice—have been routinely broken. However, the philosophy of haiku has been preserved: the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination. 

Why Haiku?
As a writer, I compose short stories and poetry. However, I find poetry closer to my heart, sometimes a better way of expressing and communicating my thoughts and emotions.  At times I may have a brief flash of an idea or a thought that can only be captured in a poem.  And at times those thoughts are incomplete and can only be expressed in sort verse or haiku. This is true to emotions as well. Certain feelings are transient and can only be captured in short writings, in my case a haiku.  I love the fact that haiku allows the writer to express flashes of thought and emotion without having to elaborate in an explanation.   To me haiku is a form of poetry which captures the essence of a specific moment in time, and that is exactly what I aim to do through my poetry.  
I will share some of my writings and poetry with you through this blog page.  So, stay tuned!