Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry Japanese Verse
Shintaishi or New Style poetry from the late 19th century was originally inspired by Japanese translations of Western Poetry, Shakespeare, Longfellow and Thomas Gray. It gradually evolved to retain the eloquent imagery of Japanese poetry but was more fluid and lengthier than the more familiar haiku and tanka.
The elements of the shintaishi are:
strophic with no prescribed number of lines.
syllabic, the number of syllables are at the discretion of the poet. A popular pattern is 12 syllables per line with caesura after the