Words change meanings. I don’t always like it, but it’s a natural law of linguistic evolution. The problem is that when a word stops meaning what it meant, what word can we then use to describe the thing for which the word previously stood?
I have had arguments with people recently who said that haiku no longer need be limited by that old 5/7/5 structure, sonnets do not need to rhyme and even one who said “a poem doesn’t have to be understood.” Some sort of word experiment with randomly generated phrases.
But if haiku are no longer to be defined as 5/7/5, do they have any limits at all on the length of their lines? Does the middle line at least have to be a little longer than the other two? Apparently not, from some of the stuff I’ve seen recently, labeled haiku. And, of course, the important question, if these “short poems” or whatever they are is now what is called haiku, then what do we call the old 5/7/5 stuff?
If sonnets do not need to rhyme, or stick to ten syllables per line, or anything, then what do I call it when I write an old-fashioned, proper sonnet?
I suspect that the art form known as satire is suffering a similar degeneration of its definition. There are a few sites out there, they might call themselves a satire site, or a “fake news” site, but they’re missing some key requirements of satire. Like funniness. There is nothing funny about a story of a kid getting kicked out of school for saying Merry Christmas. People believe that shit.
That was the story on the “National Report,” a supposed satire site, but they used the name of an actual school and the school got shitloads of hatemail.
That’s not satire. That’s trolling.
www.gurukalehuru.com 