In my senior year of high school I took a creative writing class that constantly demanded that I dish out all sorts of poetry and prose. It was a relief when we started writing haiku. The 5-7-5 form is fairly easy to produce (even if the results aren't always as beautiful or clever as Issa's), so I taught my sister, codename Blondie, how to make them up. We spend the rest of that week counting syllables out on our fingers as we talked. Some haiku were teasing, some were conversational, and many were about the artform itself. I think sometimes we had more fun with this than with our tomato fight.
When I came home for the Christmas break, I was pleased to see a haiku doodled on a notepad next to some groceries. It seems Blondie still remembers the 5-7-5 rule. I brought it up at dinner, and we started a haiku slam session right over the kitchen table, Blondie writing her favorite ones down as she went.
"Me and Rach--" she started, holding three fingers up.
"Rach and I," my mother corrected out of habit. While Blondie might be clever with haiku, she is terrible with grammar. I spent a lot of time correcting a fifty page paper of hers, crossing out countless "her and I"'s. With poetry, however, I believe that grammar can and should be ignored if a better piece will result because of it.
I put out a hand to stop her. "No, Mom, grammar doesn't matter in poetry."
"Yeah!" Blondie's finger count restarted.
"Yo, Mom, what the heck?
I write haikus my own way.
Me and Rach agree."
Slam. I think Issa would be proud.
