01-11-2026, 08:18 AM
This is a fascinating discussion. I’m going to change my plans for the morning to write.
In a bit.
For me, there’s a min / max
I have a min / max
I have no time for haiku. It’s different in Japanese, with its pictographic style of writing and long tradition, but it doesn’t work in English any more than a ghazal.
What’s a min! Ten lines is clearly enough. Take one of my favorite poems, Charlotte Mew:
I so liked Spring last year
Because you were here; –
The thrushes too –
Because it was these you so liked to hear –
I so liked you.
This year’s a different thing, –
I’ll not think of you.
But I’ll like the Spring because it is simply Spring
As the thrushes do.
It’s a complete thought, in 10 lines. 10 lines is clearly enough.
But it’s got a lot of words.
How about more lines and fewer words?
Here’s another one of my favourites, Blake’s Infant Joy. I hate Blake and I love Blake. His silly little jingles are infantile and masterful at the same time. Perhaps it takes a genius to write like he did - seemingly easy but acutally hard:
"I have no name:
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!
Im writing in several posts as typing on phone
So the above has 12 short lines and it works
So 10-12 lines is quite enough
But then you have the imagists, as in this famous poem:
THE fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
This is 6 lines. Not a haiku, but perhaps something like an English equivalent.
It’s observational, beautiful, and not smart alecky
I think the above is the right word / line minimum. You could have fewer lines but longer ones, so about the same number of words.
Anything shorter and it becomes just a piece of observation, which by itself is not enough. Like little pieces of croissant, not a proper meal
The max length is a bit harder to define
I find stories told as poems, like in the epics, or in Spenser’s madrigals or his English epic, hard to follow. The passages in themselves are beautiful. As a whole, not so much.
But poems making an argument? Different.
Eliot’s Four quarters feature four fairly long poems. And my favourite, East Coker, is quite long. Yet, I have no problem reading it. The absence of rhyme and a free verse style makes it easier I suppose.
I find Nightingale to be…not long at all. I think the great Keatsian odes - Nightingale and Psyche being at the top, then Grecian Urn and Melancholy - to be shorter than I want. I wish he’d gone on for longer.
I’ll take a pause now.
I see that - Charlotte Mew was actually 9 lines. That’s good. My point holds.
In a bit.
For me, there’s a min / max
I have a min / max
I have no time for haiku. It’s different in Japanese, with its pictographic style of writing and long tradition, but it doesn’t work in English any more than a ghazal.
What’s a min! Ten lines is clearly enough. Take one of my favorite poems, Charlotte Mew:
I so liked Spring last year
Because you were here; –
The thrushes too –
Because it was these you so liked to hear –
I so liked you.
This year’s a different thing, –
I’ll not think of you.
But I’ll like the Spring because it is simply Spring
As the thrushes do.
It’s a complete thought, in 10 lines. 10 lines is clearly enough.
But it’s got a lot of words.
How about more lines and fewer words?
Here’s another one of my favourites, Blake’s Infant Joy. I hate Blake and I love Blake. His silly little jingles are infantile and masterful at the same time. Perhaps it takes a genius to write like he did - seemingly easy but acutally hard:
"I have no name:
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!
Im writing in several posts as typing on phone
So the above has 12 short lines and it works
So 10-12 lines is quite enough
But then you have the imagists, as in this famous poem:
THE fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
This is 6 lines. Not a haiku, but perhaps something like an English equivalent.
It’s observational, beautiful, and not smart alecky
I think the above is the right word / line minimum. You could have fewer lines but longer ones, so about the same number of words.
Anything shorter and it becomes just a piece of observation, which by itself is not enough. Like little pieces of croissant, not a proper meal
The max length is a bit harder to define
I find stories told as poems, like in the epics, or in Spenser’s madrigals or his English epic, hard to follow. The passages in themselves are beautiful. As a whole, not so much.
But poems making an argument? Different.
Eliot’s Four quarters feature four fairly long poems. And my favourite, East Coker, is quite long. Yet, I have no problem reading it. The absence of rhyme and a free verse style makes it easier I suppose.
I find Nightingale to be…not long at all. I think the great Keatsian odes - Nightingale and Psyche being at the top, then Grecian Urn and Melancholy - to be shorter than I want. I wish he’d gone on for longer.
I’ll take a pause now.
I see that - Charlotte Mew was actually 9 lines. That’s good. My point holds.