Haikus by Basho

Ancient pond
Frog leaps
Splash!

Waterjar cracks -
I lie awake
This icy night.

Lightening -
Heron's cry
Stabs the darkness

Sick on a journey -
Over parched fields
Dreams wander on.


Analysis of Basho's Haikus:

I think that unlike other haikus, the haikus written by Basho actually made sense. His haikus describe the nature and he did it with a lot of descriptive phrases like "Stabs the darkness". However, some of Basho's works are not following the 5-7-5 format of haikus. I might want to think that this is because Basho wants to make his haikus more unique than others. Also, in Basho's haikus, the second line of each haiku usually describes a living thing and the last line of each haiku describes the actions of the living things. I think that this format of writing allow the readers to understand the haiku better. Even though I think that haiku can be written well by everybody, I think that the quality between professionals like Basho and amateurs like us is still very different. Professionals can think of better descriptive phrases while most amateurs like us are limited to the few words we usually use. This will make our haikus much worse. So I think that if you want to improve on Haiku skills, we can read the haikus from professionals.