Haibun

Does anyone know how to write haibun? I've been doing some reading but I'm betting there's more to it than I've understood. So here's what I've garnered so far.
Haibun prose is sparse and shortened lines which must be aware of the natural surroundings, often actually explaining a haiku. From what I've read it can stand alone or be written as part of a sequence of haibun and haiku.
There appears to be no syllable count nor number of words or lines (I read that one is 6,000 words!!)

Lots of examples in these links the first one is more the Japanese explanation of the form

more birds bees and trees closer look writing haibun

This the English take on it

Ken Jones Zen

Please add to this if you know more or if I've got it all wrong (very likely!)

More important write, give it a go. Having read Harry's snippets I reckon he's already writing haibun!

Housebound in my chair,
brings sounds from the garden:
birdsong, dogs chase squirrels.

I did a little (very little!) reading and I believe the critical aspect is that the form is a combination of prose and haiku. So you write some prose in whatever genre you choose and you then write a haiku (that follows the standards for a haiku*), which is somehow (you choose how) related to the prose. I found the wiki helpful. The wiki explains that haibun can be written in linked series of prose and haiku (which sort of follows the haikai tradition). One could write a long haibun of connected prose and haiku: Annie your 5K line example does that. Yes my head is spinning now at the thought of it.

Of course if you're me you'll come up with some weird mashup of all this and call it good! Ahem.

*Apparently you can use haiku variations like senryu, for example, too.

A good resource for reading English language haibun and also reading some articles about the form is Contemporary Haibun Online. A friend of mine has had some of her haibun (haibuns?) published there and swears by it.

Chinook

It arises out over the Pacific, sweeping east over Vancouver Island, down the Strait and up the Coast Range. Cooling now releasing moisture, as it flows over the first summit before warming as it drops, sucking moisture from the dry interior. Up again, first the Selkirks, then the Rockies. Pausing at the divide, poised for an instant, before falling, laughing, tumbling to the continent below. Warming now, dry now, it courses over the foothills – a fast warm sponge.

never can forget
the heat of that first smile nor
the light in your eyes

Arched across the western mountains, brilliant turquoise sky behind somber gray clouds. Temperatures rise twenty degrees in under an hour; a foot of snow vanishes overnight and lake ice heaves. Life quickens, buds are tricked from dormancy; animals emerge blinking from secure dens. But all too soon, the ephemeral wind passes and winter returns.

for a brief moment
reconciliation was
perhaps possible
_________________________________________________________

This is my first and so far only attempt at haibun which I put together for a contest on Poetry Soup.

I had just read and was deeply moved by Richard Flanigan's Booker Prize winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Far North, which according to Wikipedia takes " its title from 17th-century haiku poet Matsuo Bashō's famous haibun Oku no Hosomichi"

Piscator said:

It arises out over the Pacific, sweeping east over Vancouver Island, down the Strait and up the Coast Range. Cooling now releasing moisture, as it flows over the first summit before warming as it drops, sucking moisture from the dry interior. Up again, first the Selkirks, then the Rockies. Pausing at the divide, poised for an instant, before falling, laughing, tumbling to the continent below. Warming now, dry now, it courses over the foothills – a fast warm sponge.

never can forget
the heat of that first smile nor
the light in your eyes

Arched across the western mountains, brilliant turquoise sky behind somber gray clouds. Temperatures rise twenty degrees in under an hour; a foot of snow vanishes overnight and lake ice heaves. Life quickens, buds are tricked from dormancy; animals emerge blinking from secure dens. But all too soon, the ephemeral wind passes and winter returns.

for a brief moment
reconciliation was
perhaps possible
_________________________________________________________

This is my first and so far only attempt at haibun which I put together for a contest on Poetry Soup.

Click to expand...

This is quite good, I think, Mr. Fishy. I especially like the turn from the prose to the poem where you make the meteorological details turn to personal concerns. I'd read something that suggested just that kind of change was characteristic of haibun.

Piscator said:

I had just read and was deeply moved by Richard Flanigan's Booker Prize winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Far North, which according to Wikipedia takes " its title from 17th-century haiku poet Matsuo Bashō's famous haibun Oku no Hosomichi"

Click to expand...

The Wikipedia article on the Bashō work is here, and well worth reading.

Tzara said:

This is quite good, I think, Mr. Fishy. I especially like the turn from the prose to the poem where you make the meteorological details turn to personal concerns. I'd read something that suggested just that kind of change was characteristic of haibun.

The Wikipedia article on the Bashō work is here, and well worth reading.

Click to expand...

Thanks Tara for you kind comments and the links to Haibun Online and the Wiki article on the Bashō work.