I don't remember if I've explained this in much detail on the site already, but this seems like a good time to do so.

The project that is all of the haiku I have been posting for approximately the past two years has just reached a small milestone. I've completed writing and publishing the first of the three main divisions that will make up all of what I now refer to as 4913 haiku.

The last set was published yesterday. It may not be readily apparent why it's the last, so I'll explain...

Each of the three main divisions consists of 289 sets of haiku. The first set, now entirely published, is 289 sets of five. The second will be 289 sets of seven. The third, as you might have guessed, will be 289 more sets of five.

If you haven't already noticed the math, 289 is 17 squared. Since there will be 289 each of five, seven and five haiku, the grand total will end up being 17 cubed or 4913 haiku.

If you count by syllables instead of whole haiku, it's 17 to the fourth power: 83,521.

The haiku can of course be read and interpreted in any order you like, but they are intentionally related across the three main divisions as "meta-haiku." Which is to say that when all of them are published, any group from the first division of groups of five is intended to be read not just as part of that first division but also as part of a group of seventeen haiku which consists of all groups with the same number across all three of the main divisions.

In other words, 5 haiku X, 7 haiku X and 5₂ haiku X are intended to be read together.

As each of the remaining haiku groups is published, I will be updating the corresponding earlier haiku group to contain a link to the one that follows it in its meta-haiku. I may begin to add other links for various reasons. The hope is that in the end the 867 pages that make up all of the independent groups of five or seven haiku will be able to be traversed in ways other than numerically up and down the main divisions and numerically across the meta-haiku.

At the time I am writing this, the archive system on the site only links all archived entries to one another in chronological order, so attempting to just read the haiku means you have to click through other non-related entries or search the master archive page for the haiku groups by title. For a while now I have been cleaning up behind the scenes to organize both categories and tags across all of the entries in the site. When I finally have a chance to produce tag and category pages, the archived entry pages will also contain navigation chronologically within those groupings as well. Though not visible yet, there is a category for all poetry on the site, and there is a tag specifically for all haiku. There is also a tag specifically for the 4913 haiku project which will exclude any haiku on the site that are not part of it. As soon as I get this variant of the archives up and running, the 4913 haiku will be easier to isolate from the rest of the stuff on this site, and then I will be much happier!

I have already written a great deal of the haiku for the remaining main divisions, so with any luck it will not take the next four years to complete and publish them all. Regardless, I will be taking another haiku hiatus for a while before you start seeing groups of seven appear on the site.

what's on:
"John Wilkes Booth" (The Donner Party - Complete Recordings 1987-1989)