Refrigerator haiku refers to haiku made with magnetic words on fridge doors or magnets that contain haiku. It originated from the famous English haiku “Haiku are easy, but sometimes they don’t make sense, refrigerator”. Haiku evolved from Japanese poetry and has strict rules, including the use of kigo and kireji. Refrigerator haiku can be humorous and doesn’t have to conform to traditional rules.
The term refrigerator haiku is based on one of the most famous English haiku: “Haiku are easy, / but sometimes they don’t make sense / refrigerator”. It is also a generic term for haiku made using magnetic words on refrigerator doors. The term also applies to fridge magnets that contain haiku. Such magnets can be purchased in stores or online or can be made at home for a more unique magnet.
The origin of the refrigerator haiku “haikus are easy” is a mystery. Many internet users will claim that they created it, but none can be verified. Since then haiku has adorned T-shirts, websites and, ironically, fridge magnets. It fits within the parameters of a regular English haiku, but is designed to make jokes about haiku in general.
Haiku evolved from many longer forms of Japanese poetry. It grew out of the tanka and choka. A traditional Japanese haiku consists of 17 syllables. In Japanese, a syllable and a letter are often the same thing, as Japanese is a syllabic language. A Japanese haiku must contain a seasonal word called kigo and a juxtaposition called kireji.
One of the best-known examples of Japanese haiku is the Matsuo Basho haiku “Frog”: “furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto”. The meaning is more opaque than the refrigerator haiku because there is no precise link between the first, second and third lines. Translates to “An old pond / A frog jumps / Sound of water”. The assumption is that the sound of the water is made by the frog jumping into the old pond, but there is no grammatical link to confirm this.
In Japanese there is a distinction between haiku and senryu. Both use the same pattern, but haiku uses kigo and kireji, while senryu are about human weaknesses. Most humorous haiku such as refrigerator haiku are more similar to senryu than haiku, however, the term haiku in English has become a generic term for all poems with a 5-7-5 syllabic structure.
Keeping in mind the various rules and traditions, refrigerator haiku can contain any topic. Like the example of the same name, they don’t have to make sense and don’t have to conform to the strict rules that govern modern Japanese haiku. Their content is determined only by the imagination of the writer and the available words-magnets.
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