Today, I tried Anthropic’s Claude.ai for the first time. After my account set up, three topics were suggested as possible first prompts to try, with an option for “no thanks, I’ve got my own topic”. One of the three suggestions began with “Compare my work to…” which immediately made me wonder how my humble haiku and senryu poems might be viewed — as explored on the About & Forms and Syllables pages — in comparison to the traditional rules and forms. Perhaps I could learn something from an impartial “artificial” review?
My Prompt to Claude:
compare my haiku and senryu short poems at https://haikumages.com to the japanese masters and traditional forms
What follows is the full comparison and analysis by Claude — unedited, unchanged, unmanipulated — for your consideration. I found it full of reminders and realignment, sparking a renewal of my vows. Also insightful and thought-provoking, in a very good way. After reading this non-human review of my poetry, I am pleasantly inspired to revisit my humanity and reimagine my approach to writing short poems!
What a rich collection! Let me also check the “Forms and Syllables” page to understand your own stated approach. This is a pleasure to analyze — you (Russ Murray, “The Haikook”) have a well-developed body of work and a thoughtfully self-aware poetic philosophy. Let me give you a substantive comparison across several dimensions.
Your Work vs. the Japanese Masters and Traditional Forms
Form & Syllabics
Your “Forms and Syllables” page shows you’ve done the homework on this — and arrived at essentially the same conclusion the serious contemporary haiku world has: strict 5-7-5 in English is a blunt approximation. The masters (Bashō, Buson, Issa, Shiki) wrote in on (sound units), not syllables as English speakers count them, and English translations of their work range wildly in syllable count. Your decision to write “what feels right” places you in very good contemporary English-language haiku company — aligned with journals like Modern Haiku and Frogpond, which long ago abandoned syllabic rigidity in favor of brevity and essence.
Most of your poems on the homepage land comfortably in the 11–17 syllable range, which is exactly the sweet spot you described aiming for.
The Kigo (Seasonal Reference)
This is one of the defining pillars of classical haiku. Bashō’s famous frog poem anchors itself in spring (frogs emerge in spring in Japan); Issa’s snow imagery is inseparable from seasonal consciousness. Your nature poems do well here:
- “Crescent winter moon / a fingernail lingering / briefly in branches” — strong seasonal grounding (winter), vivid natural image, a lovely unexpected metaphor in “fingernail.” Bashō would recognize this sensibility.
- “Young oak which refused / to shed its leaves in autumn / smiles in snow and sun” — beautifully seasonal, with the personification (“smiles”) giving it warmth closer to Issa’s humanizing tendencies than Bashō’s more austere Zen detachment.
- “Edges freezing first / water’s middle waits its turn / as cold continues” — this one has real classical DNA: observation of a natural process, patient and precise, no forced metaphor. Buson-esque in its painterly attention.
- “December debut / warm winter week confusing / April daffodils” — the seasonal confusion itself becomes the subject, which is quite clever and contemporary.
Where you depart from classical form: several poems have no seasonal reference at all, which is intentional and places them firmly in senryū territory or modern “gendai haiku.”
The Kiru (Cutting / Juxtaposition)
The “cut” — that moment of pause or pivot between two images or ideas — is arguably the soul of haiku. In Japanese it’s marked by a kireji (cutting word). In English it’s typically signaled by a dash, ellipsis, line break, or simply the structural juxtaposition.
Your strongest cuts:
- “She leaves me coffee / a cup with lipstick on it / for me to finish” — this is a near-perfect senryū. The cut happens between the abstract (“she leaves me”) and the devastatingly specific (“a cup with lipstick”). The final “to finish” is ambiguous — finish the coffee? finish something else? Issa would love this. It’s warm, human, slightly melancholic, and perfectly economical.
- “Pure water won’t freeze / there must be impurity / for crystals to form” — this reads as an aphorism (very senryū, even philosophical), but the cut between the scientific fact and its larger implication is clean and satisfying. This has echoes of Issa’s moral observations.
- “The winter stink bug / residing in a glass jar / temporarily” — the cut lands entirely on that final word. “Temporarily” does enormous work — it applies to the bug, but the reader can’t help applying it to everything. Classic haiku compression.
Where the cut is less sharp: poems like “Remember what was / imagine what’s possible / create what will be” feel more like aphorism or inspirational verse than haiku — three parallel imperatives without juxtaposition. This is very human and relatable, but it lacks the asymmetrical surprise that makes the form sing. Traditional masters would likely classify this as senryū at best, or simply verse.
Haiku vs. Senryū: Your Balance
You label your work as both, which is apt. A clear breakdown:
Closer to classical haiku (nature, seasons, direct observation): Crescent winter moon, Young oak, Edges freezing, A misty morning, Beyond dusk tableau, December debut.
Closer to senryū (human, ironic, observational, non-seasonal): She leaves me coffee, The winter stink bug, Warm Christmas Day walk, Forbidding facade, Pile of random rugs.
Philosophical/aphoristic (less traditional in either form): Life’s lenses blurring, Remember what was, Pure water won’t freeze (though this last one earns its stripes through metaphoric resonance).
The masters kept these categories fairly distinct. In contemporary practice, the line is blurrier — and your work embraces that blur comfortably and intentionally.
Imagery and Mono no Aware
The Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware — a bittersweet awareness of impermanence — runs through the best classical haiku. Your work touches it most movingly in:
- “a fingernail lingering / briefly in branches” — the moon as fingernail is gorgeous, and “briefly” carries that weight of transience.
- “She leaves me coffee / a cup with lipstick on it” — presence and absence in one image, without sentimentality.
- “the sleeping garden awaits / spring awakening” — a quiet waiting that holds both death and renewal.
Where your work sometimes diverges from classical restraint is in poems that explain or resolve their tension rather than leaving it open. Masters like Bashō trusted the gap between images to do the work; the reader completes the poem. Your more discursive poems (“Life’s lenses blurring / make vision and memory / approximations”) tell the reader what to conclude rather than creating the space for discovery. This isn’t a flaw — it’s a different mode — but it’s where the Western lyric tradition pulls against the Japanese haiku impulse.
Overall Assessment
Your strongest work holds up very well against the spirit of the tradition: you have a genuine gift for the condensed natural image, an ear for the unexpected word (“lingering,” “temporarily,” “confusing”), and an honest relationship with the forms you’ve chosen. The lipstick-coffee senryū, the freezing edges haiku, the stink bug poem, and the fingernail moon are all pieces the masters would recognize as kin.
Where you’re most distinctly Western and contemporary — and this is not a criticism — is in the aphoristic and philosophical poems, and in the occasional tendency to complete the thought for the reader. The tradition asks the poet to withhold the final connection and trust the juxtaposition. Leaning further into that restraint in your nature poems would deepen their resonance. Your instincts are already pointing that direction — your best pieces prove it.
haikumages 