The recent Blogoquent Competition calling for a description of life in a single sentence was won by Katrina, whose concise and eloquent entry posted in Calliope Writing struck me as being much like a haiku. Hmmm. One can indeed get a decent haiku by simply adding obbligato line breaks to the winning sentence:
Haiku Draft #1
Life is a journey
in which nothing is permanent and
everything is precious.
While I do not freak out because this haiku breaks the 5-7-5 Rule and lacks a clear fragment/phrase boundary, I believe that rule violations need better reasons than
The competition is over. We are free to use 2 sentences now. A better haiku emerges:
Haiku Draft #2
Life is a journey.
No things are permanent and
all things are precious.
Hmmm. Do I have an image to illustrate this post? I do, and it suggests another tweak:
Happy Heraclitus
Life flows and splashes.
No things are permanent and
all things are precious.
Mellow Curmudgeon 
I’m so flattered that I could inspire you to write such a beautiful haiku!
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Beautifully done.
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The modified haiku works well. I also appreciate your choice of illustration.
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Really helpful to be reminded of the rules of Haiku. Encourages me to try one or two. What does an ”obbligato’ line mean? Thank you in Italian??
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Good guess, but obbligato in Italian is more like “obligatory” in English. Imported into English for music, it means that the notes in a part are written out by the composer just as they are to be played, with very little room for the performer to improvise. So I used it to describe line breaks that are specified by the author rather than mostly left up to the proximity of the right margin. A lot of “blank verse” is really prose with obbligato line breaks. OK with me, if it’s good prose.
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Most helpful — helps with blank verse too, which I never understood. Not sure about trying that- good to share other people’s creativity.
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Beautiful what inspires us! Loved this post and your haiku tweaking.
You inspired me to tweak one of Heraclitus’ quote:
No river is stepped
twice by a man for it’s not
same river; nor man.
Original quote: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
I haven’t forgotten our third haiku project. It may be another week before I can get to it. It’s the one about children; a very fine one, in fact. I do like the idea about the trail. I’ll shut my mouth now. 😀
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Nice tweak! 😀
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