Found Haikus Written October 14, 2020 Since Ezra Pound adapted it to English verse a century ago, the Japanese poetic form known as haiku has become popular in this country.  In its most basic form, a haiku consists of three lines with five, seven, and five syllables.  Of course, it's a challenge to fit an idea into that framework, but the resulting 17 syllables can express a charmingly simple image. They can in the Japanese language, at least.  Namiko Abe notes that “Japanese has a pitch accent, which can sound like a monotone to a new speaker's ear.”  Do mo A ri ga to, Mis ter Ro bo to.  “The pitch accent is based on the two relative pitch levels of high and low.  Japanese sentences are constructed so that when spoken, the words sound almost like a melody with rising and falling pitches, like a steadily flowing stream.”  In contrast, English uses a stress accent.  We pronounce our accented syllables louder and longer. I always thought a poem ought to include rhyme.  A haiku does not.  But it seems to me that the English version ideally would at least include a modicum of meter, obtained by giving each line a distinct meaning and stressing the odd-numbered syllables. This could be a verse Show- ing how that plan would look If we fol- lowed it. The following English “haiku” has no rhythm.  In fact, the middle line ends with an unstressed preposition. De- ci- pher- ing it Will not be a cake- walk for That fu- ture pu- pil. This is actually one of a large number of unintentional haiku sentences discovered by a bot as it scanned the text of the New York Times in the fall of 2020. None of them follow my pattern of stresses, and the bot isn't perfect; many of its found sentences don't strictly follow the 5+7+5 rule.  But here are 28 that do. In the beginning, I worried for how we were                  going to survive. Being unable to congregate has left a     huge hole in our lives. There are going to be problems everywhere in                the United States.     History hovers     over these pages like a          bitter, ghostly scent.     Then came the war, with      the carnage and sacrifice      that Whitman witnessed.     That we know what is     going to happen only      makes it more awful.     Gone in Whitman are     the clomp of pentameter      and the winking rhymes.     The narrator shares     the author's name and much of                               his biography. It lifts me up that gals have hope that one day this                          is going to end. Almost all of us are on hold right now, in one                     way or another. When I woke up, I could see the nightmare for what                             it was: history. Can you remember that far back through the fog of                       social distancing? What bit of info will you jot down that you would                         otherwise forget? Is it possible to be young in age and old                    in experience?   For us, this has been a great time to play board games,                    laugh and reconnect. Cooking's like that still, even if the threats against                us are different.     Before you add the     chopped tomatoes, you want                    to remove the skin.     If I can't bring my     food to the flame, why not bring                    the flame to my food?     Watches can last for     many years, but their straps are                    meant to be replaced.     That is a fun but,     let's be honest here, largely                         irrelevant stat.     Still, they consider     themselves permanent converts                        to online shopping. An institution has to want to build itself     to look like something. The architecture may not be the grandest, but                     it is substantive. The American dream is fundamentally                 meritocratic. And Barbara feels, to her astonishment, that      the world is shrinking. Maybe there was one song that encapsulated           your relationship. As for a wedding, that really wasn't part of            the conversation. And yet she still finds ways to speak to me, through the                   things she left behind.