The more we get the “poetry” out, the better our hokku become. Word choice is very important, and  in hokku we use simple words that do not get in the way of the reader’s experience.

Every hokku is an experience of the reader. Unlike a lot of English-language poetry (including modern haiku), the focus in hokku is not on the writer but on the reader, who creates a sensory experience from a few simple words and from his or her past store of experiences.

These few words must be simple and direct. Otherwise the hokku takes on a flavor that it should not have. It is like giving a child some water that is not entirely pure. The child will say “this tastes funny.” When we try to use “poetic” words in hokku, or when the writer of the hokku is all too obvious in the verse, or if the phrasing is too “poetic,” a hokku “tastes funny.”

Hokku should be like pure, mountain water. It is clear, and it tastes only of water. One should be able to “see right through” hokku just as one sees through pure water. The words are only the means to a sensory experience, and if the words themselves stand out, the experience is given a “funny taste.” Something is wrong.

When determining where someone is in understanding of hokku, one has to look not just at a single verse, but at several verses; then one can see overall how well a writer understands hokku.

Those who have not yet dropped the influence of modern haiku or of conventional poetry tend to waver back and forth between being “poetic” and moving toward a more clear and pure form of verse, toward what hokku should be.

Part of the learning process is the conscious elimination of all traces of “poetry” from one’s hokku, and that will allow the real poetry — the sensory experience of the reader — to take place. The poetry of hokku is not in the words, which must be very simple and ordinary, nor in the writer, who should get the “self” completely out of the way. It is in the experience of the reader.

For some reason, people new to hokku always seem afraid to abandon “poetry” for experience. They are taught that poetry is a matter of cleverness, of manipulating words in a conventionally “poetic” way, and hokku seems just too poor and plain for them. But it is precisely in the poverty and simplicity of hokku that real poetry is found, when all the conscious “poetry” is abandoned. Then things and events can just be what they are; no writer stands in the way of the reader’s experience. And the reader then becomes the “poet” who allows the experience to happen in his or her own mind.

So very good advice to anyone taking up hokku is this: Forget about poetry!