Haiku, which is what I mostly throw up on this blog-foolishness, is actually a derivative of a the beginning of a longer form of Japanese poetry - renga. There all sorts of things you can google up to get a better peabody poindexter understanding of it, but basically, the concept behind renga is a three-line verse of 5-7-5 syllable structure (haiku), followed by a two-line verse of 7-7 syllable structure (tanka), back to the three-line 5-7-5, back to two-line 7-7, and so on. Folks would get together in groups and write these things, with each person only seeing the previous verse to base their verse off of, eventually creating an overall piece of structured chaos. Renga can be considered by some to only be true with 100 verses, but I've read of 40, 54, anything really being renga.
What we started doing was getting together the weekend before a new moon to get drunk and sit around and bullshit, listening to music, and writing this shit, passing around notebooks. There are those who were very serious about this in history, bringing large notebooks of haiku and tanka verses to put in the best positions during renga parties. We are of the looser crowd, freestyling it, and not being all rigid. Thus, our renga's only requirement is that we do it around the kitchen table, and it end with a 7-7 verse. I'll be putting these up along the way as we do them. I won't even be trying to have any sensible punctuation though, as not everyone thinks about that when passing a little shitty notebook around the kitchen table while getting drunk. Like you even care.
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