Essays 23 essays 23 Copying to Create: The Role of Imitation and Emulation in Developing Haiku Craft 1 Michele Root-Bernstein A good quotation can serve as a model for one’s own work, a perpetual challenge … Perhaps writers should begin, in fact, by inwardly uttering again what has already been uttered, to get the feel of it and to savor its full power … [W]e are what we quote. Geofrey O’ Brien 2 You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can’t! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch … And it’s at the very moment you make a botch of it that you’re yourself. Pablo Picasso 3 S uppose it a habit of mine—or yours—to copy haiku. I commit the poems of others to memory; I copy them down in my notebook. You copy word for word certain phrases you admire and place them in your own verse. We both copy the theme, structure, or atmosphere of a great haiku and attempt to echo their spirit with our own words and images. What are we, copycats? Oh, yes. We may feel a bit sheepish, a bit secretive or defensive, but we do it all the same. And with good reason. As uncer- tain and ambivalent as we may be about what it means to copy, one thing is for sure. Copying is an important learning behavior that can be used to advantage as a creative strategy in the writing of haiku.