HAIKU DEFINITIONS: LORRAINE ELLIS HARR
Lorraine Ellis Harr, haiku poet, teacher, and editor of Dragonfly, a pioneering haiku journal, became interested in defining American haiku and its relationship to the Japanese original. In the 1970s she drew up lists of guidelines or rules for the composition of haiku in English. The first and most influential of these was “The ISN’TS of Haiku”—things that haiku is not—that was first published in Haiku Highlights in 1972. Later Harr followed with a matched set of guidelines, “Haiku Is” and “Senryu Is,” which were helpful in understanding of the differences between haiku and senryu.