Haiku such as "kyo" () may look like two syllables to English speakers but are in fact a single "on" (as well as a single syllable) in Japanese. In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku. Shorter haiku are very much more common in 21st century English haiku writing. Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about 12 syllables in English approximate the duration of 17 Japanese "on". Also in translations four lines is more appropriate for
Haiku theoretician F. S. Flint, who passed on Couchoud's ideas to other members of the proto-Imagist Poets' Club such as Ezra Pound. Amy Lowell made a trip to London to meet Pound and find out about haiku. She returned to the United States where she worked to interest others in this "new" form. Haiku subsequently had a considerable influence on Imagists in the 1910s, notably Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" of 1913, but, notwithstanding several efforts by Yone Noguchi to explain "the hokku spirit", there was as yet little understanding of the form and its history. R. H. Blyth