by Alison

I’ve long been a big fan of advice columns. It all started with Dear Abby so many years ago and to this day I still search out the advice columns in my local paper and favorite fashion magazine. Sometimes the advice is good and other times not so good, but they always seem to be an entertaining read.

Now I will never look at advice columns the same way thanks to Haikusue.

Haikusue is the advice columnist for the San Francisco-based fashion, music and lifestyle magazine Style Wylde. And true to her namesake, Haikusue delivers her wisdom concisely in seventeen syllables. Her haiku are clever and well-crafted and her ability to get to the point is refreshing. But do you know what’s most amazing? Her advice is GOOD.

How does she do it! That’s what I wanted to know. So I decided to contact HKS to find out more. Here’s what she has to say:

Have you always been good at giving advice?

Honestly, I do not know.   I’ve definitely improved as I’ve gotten older.  I receive a ton of relationship questions, and I think it took being in a stable relationship for seven years to gain the knowledge/life experience to answer other people’s questions.  Of course, I am still learning all the time, and I am sure years from now, when I reread this interview, and see that I had the audacity to think I knew enough about life to give out advice at this point, I will be mortified.

How did it occur to you to combine haiku with advice giving? Why do you think this combo works so well?

I was already writing a blog, when I came up with the advice column idea.  The now defunct blog was made up of boring political commentary/life musings by me, which no one read. Each entry was introduced by a haiku-summary before the post. After a while, I began to realize that the haiku were by far the best part of the blog and was I looking for way to phase out of boring-blog status and into something more creative and haiku centric. At that point I was also really inspired by fortune cookies.  I think I was eating a lot of  them, and saving the fortunes. I became obsessed with the seemingly abstract, yet sometimes spot-on advice they seem to dole out.  I still love fortune cookies, and I am very superstitious about how you chose your cookie when they are presented and what you do with the fortunes afterwards.

I think haiku and advice work well together because haiku demands extreme word conservation. You can’t mince words, or beat around the bush with haiku, you only have 17 syllables you have to maximize the impact of your words in order to actually give real advice in such a tight format.  Of course, on the flip side, sometimes readers do not appreciate the lack of soft-pedaling in my answers.  I received many hate e-mails, and negative comments from people after I posted this one:  http://www.stylewylde.com/haikusue/2009/10/7/live-in-haiku.html, apparently it was a little too ‘tough love’.

Do you write haiku when you are not solving other people’s problems?

Yes. I started writing haiku for an elementary school poetry project; originally I think I was drawn to it because it seemed easier than writing a huge a-b-a-b rhyme scheme sonnet. I remember thinking “Really, 17 syllables about nature and I’m done, and it doesn’t really have to make sense, SOLD.”  Later, in Junior High I discovered I was actually good at it, when a haiku I wrote ended up winning a district- wide competition.  (Of course during that time I was also dabbling in a lot of typical 7th grade girl poetry writing about my eternal undying love for John Taylor of Duran Duran and the unbearable soul-crushing weight of braces on my teeth.)  After that, I took a break from haiku for many years, and it was until about 2003 when in a fit of boredom at my soul-sucking admin job I happened on the then ’secret’ craigslist.org forum ‘haiku hotel’.  The haiku hotel was weird, and beautiful, and hilarious all at the same time. I loved it.  I haiku’d all day long.  I would count syllables on my fingers as I took the bus home each day.  Craigslist really gave birth to Haikusue, and I have been writing haiku daily in one way or another ever since.

This has been a brutally cold winter for many of us. Would you have any sage advice for aspiring fashionistas trying to deal with this unusually cold weather?

Vogue, Harpers and Elle

Christened season of layers

Embrace it with flare

I have my own problem and I’m hoping you can help….

I’ve tried everything but I can’t seem to get my husband to pick up his dirty socks. And his dirty underwear. And jeans and shirts. His dirty laundry is pretty much thrown all over the house. I’ve tried everything, from simply asking him to aim for the hamper to more passive aggressive techniques (i.e. sabotaging his underwear drawer, etc.) Nothing has worked and my back is killing me. What should I do?

Dear Alison:

shame him to action

refuse to pick up laundry,

invite HIS friends ’round