An haiku is a poem usually consisting of seventeen or fewer syllables broken into three lines (when written in English). Haiku are valued for their concise statements of truth and often beautiful imagery.

Our HaikuGenerator program creates somewhat random haiku of three lines. The first line consists of words totaling five syllables, the second line has seven syllables and the third has five syllables.

Our haiku creation algorithm is capable of producing a practically infinite number of unique haiku. Since the HaikuGenerator is only a computer program, though, the generated haiku are sometimes nonsensical. Sometimes, though, the poems produced are meaningful and interesting. Here are two of my favorites:

Exalted station:
entrance of inferior
very dangerous

The aggregated
surface into one party
gentleman before

You can use the HaikuGenerator as a source of entertainment or as a starting point for writing your own poetry. You can often turn a nonsensical haiku generated by the program into a meaningful one with the change of just one or two words.

Note: when you hit the “Generate Haiku” button, the program takes about two seconds to create a new poem (using an iPod Touch).

Future Updates:
Allow the user to control the number of lines and the number of syllables per line in the generated haiku.

Languages: English

Requirements:
Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch
Requires iPhone 2.1 Software Update