Shasei

mushrooms
sprouting from rain-soaked tree stumps
a poor man’s feast

Kim M. Russell, 24^th October 2018

My response to Carpe Diem #1528 Shasei

S is for shasei, a haiku writing technique invented by Masaoka Shiki. Chèvrefeuille tells us that Shiki’s term, shasei, means sketch from life and the poetic principle is ‘to depict the thing just as it is’. Shiki was a rebel and if older poets overused an idea or method, it was his personal goal to point this out and suggest something else. Shiki hated associations, contrasts, comparisons, wordplay, puns and riddles; he preferred the quiet simplicity of just stating what he saw without anything else happening in the haiku.

Today we are writing haiku in the shasei style.