The Month of Two Great Festivals

February is the jolly month of Typewritertide, when we celebrate International Typewriter Appreciation Month by letting the typewriters speak for themselves. February is also International Anything-but-Haiku Month, which neatly meshes with our other celebration like a pair of well-machined gears by giving the typewriters something to say.

It might be asked, Why set aside a particular month for not writing haiku, when it is just as easy not to write haiku in July or November?

But (if we may answer a question with a question) is it really just as easy? Is it not, in fact, very difficult not to write haiku? One who is alert to the movements in the shadows can see the machinations of Big Haiku everywhere. Innocent children are lured into the devouring maw of the haiku establishment by their English teachers, who have been suborned by the promise of the one thing that is truly valuable to a teacher: viz., a day of no work. The children grow up to be adults and remember that poetry can be accomplished and praise won by counting syllables—or, even better, by not counting syllables—and arranging a short and trivial observation in three lines. The moment they have a sincere feeling or aesthetic experience they feel compelled to share, the haiku will burst out of them like an uncontrollable sneeze.

The only cure for the haiku habit is discipline; and the best discipline is not just to refrain from writing haiku, but actively to write something that is not haiku every day for a month, even if it is the shortest month in the calendar. If you are a passive consumer of poetry, you can simply ride along with us as we defy poetic orthodoxy and delve into the lost treasures of form and meter. But would you not be better pleased with yourself if you exercised your own poetic faculty? The month is only twenty-eight days this year: you are not taking on a commitment that will upend your life. Write a poem a day. You’ll be doing your part to put Big Haiku in its place.