Victories & Foibles. David Seegal

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       COMMENTS ON THE POEMS

      by YOSHIO MANAKA, M.D.

       IN ANCIENT JAPAN THERE WERE LONG POEMS called choka to the end of which were attached short summarizing poems. These short poems eventually became separate entities and were named waka. Following this change, some writers created a new type of poem which at the outset was the first part of the waka, then others chose the last part, and finally some experimented with chaining one part to another to create a series of independent short verses or a montage, called renga. The first seventeen syllables were called hokku (beginning poem); later, they were called haiku. Some authors liked this short form in which they could trim away unnecessary words; other writers delighted in making humorous or cynical expressions with the same type of poem, thus giving rise to the form called senryu. So the haiku and the senryu are grandsons of the choka, the long poem.