Poetry | Monoku | American Sentences
Monocle on Monoku and My Aha Moment
With help from Jim Kacian and Allen Ginsberg
this article is all about a poetry form called monoku my motivation to write it comes from wanting to share what i’ve learned
before we go any further, there are a few things you need to know:
first off, all these lines are styled as monoku but they’re not the real thing (i’m explaining what monoku is and showing you what it is not! 😉)
second, I make no claim to be a ‘know-it-all’ monoku expert (to be honest with you i’ve written no more than a few monoku)
third and last, i completely understand if you think i am dingbats! (i hope i’m not but i do like counting syllables on my fingers! 😜)
ok with that said and done let’s jump in and learn about monoku:
the label, monoku, was proposed by haiku poet jim kacian to describe one-line poems constructed with seventeen syllables
mono is the Greek prefix for one and ku is Japanese for verse monoku literally means a single line of poetic verse
✨ think of monoku as being haiku that don’t fit into three lines
monoku are standalone poems; they are not meant to be combined nor can monoku be embedded as lines in longer poems except in the instance where the monoku is part of a haibun in which case the monoku is separate from the poetic prose
while monoku are most often displayed in one horizontal line it is acceptable to format them in two consecutive lines with the indented split occurring at the kireji or pivot (kireji by the way is the Japanese lit term for ‘cutting word’)
i hope you’re keeping up with me — i’ll pause here so you can catch your breath
some will identify this staggered layout as broken monoku hmmm, jim k probably wouldn’t approve of this variation
jim talks about monoku’s enhanced speed as its unique property and how a missing fragment gives monoku its ambiguity which for him is one of the keys to distinguishing it from haiku
it’s the ambiguity that makes monoku so fascinating that and its capacity to have multiple kire — cutting points – which are unmarked and become evident only as each reader reads
this gives rise to subtle shifts in interpretation and perspective it feels as if the alignment of words is playing tricks with your mind
✨ i myself find it helpful to think of monoku as word puzzles
it’s a lot to process in one hit there’s more to come if you follow...
monoku are like sheep in that singular and plural are the same and like sheep monoku are shorn down to their naked fundamentals
their brevity make monoku ideal for many applications such as epigram apothegm maxim aphorism epigraph
monoku don’t use sound devices like other forms of poetry no need for alliteration rhyme rhythm meter assonance repetition is used for effect to shift the reader’s attention
orthographically monoku are distinctively simplistic all forms of punctuation are considered virtually taboo no initial uppercase letter or final full stop period apostrophes commas hyphens dashes only if and when you must
unlike haiku monoku are unrestricted in thematic tropes in other words monoku can be about whatever comes to mind providing it captures as does haiku a single moment in time that gives readers the impression it’s happening in the here and now
✨ think of monoku as a one line snapshot of an observation
monoku can be less than seventeen syllables but never more of import monoku are NOT seventeen syllable sentences a point where many poets seem to have gone astray with monoku but fortuitously led to my “aha that’s it!” revelation 😅
we have none other than allen ginsberg to thank for the solution he tried to build on what his friend jack kerouac had done with haiku by ‘incorporating western attitude into eastern genre’ and created a one-line poem he called ‘American Sentence’ seventeen syllables punctuated as a regular sentence but with the minimalist style we associate with haiku
below is an example of a ginsberg ‘American Sentence’ —
“Crescent moon, girls chatter at twilight on the bus ride to Ankara.”
i’d never heard of them until starting ‘monocle on monoku’ i may be wrong but I don’t think they are well known here on medium i say that because it draws a blank in searched stories and topic tags
until now that is — i have just made the ‘American Sentence’ tag 😊
yay, an aussie bringing American Sentences to medium! 😆 except they’ve actually been here quite some time if not all along camouflaged and hitching a ride on their kacian cousin monoku
I hereby confess I’ve perpetuated the misinformation when I’ve gone with monoku for what is an American Sentence and with my editor’s zeal then stripped it clean of all punctuation so it has a monoku look even if it doesn’t read like one
we’re all on the learning curve here and with poetry there’s much to learn
ok so now we have reached the point where we can apply our learnings
below i have assembled four seventeen syllable monostichs with word spacing as the only typographical demarcation —
mental acuity my mind perceives heeds only what it wants to
the world passes by ancient men in shapeless jackets sipping coffee
fir forest heart in the crosshairs flee not now an opportunity
a leaf drifts its resting place the pages of her forgotten notebook
✋ your task is to decide what you believe is the best label for each: ~ monoku ~ American Sentence ~ haiku ~ monostich ~ or other ~
please understand there are no right or wrong answers in this exercise we will all benefit from pooling our literary opinions which you’re invited to share in the comments attached to this story
many thanks to Manu Chatterjee for his awesome indent template without it i could not have shown you how a broken monoku looks his template gives poets a tool medium’s editor doesn’t have click on the storylink below then copy paste and save the template
thank you for reading my mammoth string of seventeen syllable lines i do sincerely hope you have learned something you didn’t know before 🙏 💕 🙏
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