Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall series, often stated that if you want to be a writer you must learn to paint pictures with words. The target audience for Redwall, Jacques' first novel, was the children of the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind. For these children, he knew his descriptive style of writing had to zone in on the senses of touch, smell, sound and taste. Chapter 2 of Mattimeo, the third book of the series begins in true Jacques fashion:
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the gaps in the ruined walls and roof of St. Ninian's old church, highlighting the desolation of weed and thistle growing around broken, rotted pews. A small cloud of midges dispersed from dizzy circling as Slagar brushed by them. The fox peered through a broken door timber at the winding path of dusty brown which meandered aimlessly southward to meet the woodland fringe in the eastern edge.
Slagar watched silently, his ragged breath sucking in and out at the purple-red diamond-patterned skull mask which covered his entire head. When he spoke, it was a hoarse, rasping sound, as if he had received a terrible throat injury at some point.
What does any of this have to do with Haiku? I was hoping you would ask. You see, haiku is all about capturing that brief moment in time that would otherwise be long forgotten. Unlike novelists such as Brian Jacques, in traditional haiku you only get seventeen syllables to accomplish this task. It is your job as the artist to paint the image of the moment so well that the reader's imagination is spurred into action. An active imagination is a powerful tool and haiku relies on it. In fact, the short form would be nothing more than a wasteland of empty thoughts without it. I can't help but think that Jacques was or could have been a haiku master, after all, through the poetry in his words he manufactured a world that even blind children could see.
The noble wind pounds
Everlasting trees leaning
On eternity
--Jesse T. Willett
