Haibun

From “Telling a Story: Haibun” by Bruce Ross:

A haibun is a prose narrative that is autobiographical—that is, in haibun you are telling a story about something you did or saw. Prose is ordinary writing, as opposed to poetry. Haibun is prose writing that is expressed poetically, with figures of speech and rhythmic sound values, and is full of emotion, like the writing in a diary. What is unusual about haibun is that it includes haiku. The haiku will act like little punctuation marks of feeling in the prose. Sometimes the haiku will illustrate the insight of your narrative, and sometimes it will extend the implications of your narrative. So, in a haibun, someone tells a story full of emotion that leads us to an insight about oneself, another person, a place, or a thing, and this is emphasized through one or more haiku. In haibun the reader is moved by the interrelationship between the prose writing and the haiku.

From Anino Ng Yapak by Reuel Molina Aguila:

Interesting take on haibun by Raymond de Borja:

I am drawn to the haibun, as a diaristic form, and as an apt heuristic for contemporary modes and conditions of travel.

In my haibun, the figure of the cosmopolitan of the middle attempts an experience of place—peering through the spectral image, sifting through layers of mediation to find not the authentic experience awash in Benjamin’s aura, but the nagging reminder of a 10 a.m. EST conference call.

I turn to the haibun as a form of travel writing capable of various modes of attention: A descriptive, narrative, but also possibly drifting and digressive mode of prose; and a still, incisive, resonant mode of haiku.

This marked a shift in the focus of haibun, away from sentimental, diaristic reflections filled with nostalgia for capital and courtly life, toward the contemplative engagement with nature that Bashō embodied.