Haiku a phrase in the remaining 12 "on" (it may not be apparent from the English translation of the Issa that the first five "on" mean "Edo's rain"). In comparison with English verse typically characterized by syllabic meter, Japanese verse counts sound units known as ""on"" or morae. Traditional haiku consist of 17 "on", in three phrases of five, seven and five "on" respectively. Among contemporary poems "teikei" ( fixed form) haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while "jiyuritsu" ( free form) haiku do not. One of the examples below illustrates that traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by
Haiku in English and was succeeded by "Modern Haiku" in 1969, which remains an important English-language haiku journal. Other early journals included "Haiku Highlights" (founded 1965 by European-American writer Jean Calkins and later taken over by the European-American writer Lorraine Ellis Harr who changed the name to "Dragonfly"), Eric Amann's "Haiku" (founded 1967), and "Haiku West" (founded 1967). The first English-language haiku society in America, founded in 1956, was the Writers' Roundtable of Los Altos, California, under the direction of Helen Stiles Chenoweth. The Haiku Society of America was founded in 1968 and began publishing its journal "Frogpond" in 1978. Important resources for