HAIKU POETRY AND METAPHORICAL THOUGHT - AN INVITATION TO INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY

Haiku, a Japanese form of short poetry, enjoys international popularit y. The combination of simplicity of form and profoundness of meaning m akes haiku an ideal topic for the interdisciplinary study of creativit y. Haiku is unusual among poetic genres in that poets are cautioned to avoid the use of figurative language such as metaphor, which may obsc ure the expression of a simple perceptual truth. In the same breath, t he poet is told that good haiku usually have two elements in tension t hat create in the reader a new insight-a definition that sounds remark ably like modern views of metaphor. In this article, we examine this i nteresting paradox and describe some preliminary data from an ongoing series of studies. We suggest that the negative view of metaphor often expressed by teachers and poets may be primarily definitional. Modern views of metaphor suggest that it is much more than literary embellis hment and, in fact, often speak of it as closely akin to perceptual pr ocesses. Unfortunately, this new perspective on figurative language ha s not been widely embraced by disciplines outside of cognitive science , largely because of an unfortunate lack of interdisciplinary communic ation. The purpose of this article is to begin just such a discussion.