Poetry Friday

Who will guard over the fragile blossom of haiku poetry? Who will protect it in our own time against all that threatens it: societal indifference to poetry in general, materialism, a blindness to nature and our absolute inclusion in it, and, structurally, the heresy that "haiku" can be any utterance written in 5-7-5 syllables, or the recent disturbing trend of defining as haiku short, obtuse, experimental language games that only seem to proclaim the poet's cleverness for cleverness's sake? Who, indeed, will guard over haiku?

~ David Lanoue ~