The only problem
        with Haiku is that you just
        get started and then

          ~Roger McGough

Haiku are okay, but they're a foreign import, and you’ll get more bang for your buck if you write in a poetic form that comes down from our own English-language tradition. 

The poem "Cross," by Langston Hughes, shows how form and content work together to become more sum than parts. Hang on--I used to teach this in Poetry in the Schools, and if fifth graders get it, you will too.  

First off, I give the kids a copy of Hughes’ poem without line breaks:

CROSS

My old man's a white old man, and my old mother's black. If ever I cursed my white old man I take my curses back. If ever I cursed my black old mother and wished she were in hell, I'm sorry for that evil wish and now I wish her well. My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder were I'm going to die, being neither white nor black? 

I explain that Hughes was of mixed race and wrote in the 1920s and 30s during what's called the Harlem Renaissance. (His parentage isn’t as he claims in the poem, but nothing is less important than the facts when you’re on your way to the truth, right?) 

Next I ask the kids to put in a slash mark where they think the lines break while I read the poem aloud, with feeling. It’s too much to ask for you to print the poem out and actually put in the slash marks, but you could read it to yourself  and think about it.  

I guarantee, you’ll come up with either a long line: 

     My old man's a white old man and my old mother's black.
    If ever I cursed my white old man, I take my curses back.

Or a short one: 

     My old man's a white old man
    And my old mother's black.
    If ever I cursed my white old man
    I take my curses back.

Nobody ever breaks the lines any other way. Why? Because the form is part of you already, whether you're conscious of it or not. Listen:

     Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
     That saved a wretch like me.
     I once was lost but now am found;
     Was blind but now can see.

It’s hymn stanza, very appropriate once you start thinking about what the poem is saying, especially all the things the word cross means:

• Genetic cross—the mix of black and white.
• Angry or mad—how the speaker feels about what he’s saying.
• Crossroads or diverging path--he’s certainly at one.
• And finally, cross to bear. 

As in Christ on the cross. 

Add that to curses and hell, and it's Christian imagery galore! To say that the "house" is the one God lives in might not be too much of a stretch, either. So the hymn stanza fits, and you feel it. Suddenly what the poem says goes into hyperdrive, shifting from the merely sociological to the universally spiritual.

Here’s the Langston Hughes poem with its original line breaks and punctuation. 

CROSS 

     My old man's a white old man
    And my old mother's black.
    If ever I cursed my white old man
    I take my curses back.
    If ever I cursed my black old mother
    And wished she were in hell,
    I'm sorry for that evil wish
    And now I wish her well
    My old man died in a fine big house.
    My ma died in a shack.
    I wonder were I'm going to die,
    Being neither white nor black?

Hughes didn’t divide these lines into three four-line stanzas, but if he had, you’d think you just opened the Methodist Hymnal. 

You say you’re still not feeling it? Go back to Roger McGough’s haiku: 

     The only problem
    with Haiku is that you just
    get started and then 

If you don't know what the haiku form is, there's no joke. No content without container, so to speak.

Robert Frost, apostle of formal poetry, said, “I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.” Philip Larkin, former Poet Laureate of England and demi-god of verse, said, “Poetry is nobody's business except the poet's, and everybody else can fuck off." 

That second quote has nothing to do with form--I just felt like including it.  

A N   A F T E R T H O U G H T 

Probably the best haiku in the English language isn’t a haiku at all: