What do surrealists and haiku poets have in common?

In this month’s .Haiku column I ask, What do surrealism and haiku have in common?

Surrealists aimed to jar people. But they didn’t just jar. They had methods and messages. Surrealists filled their writings and paintings with images they believed were imbued with the deeper, common experiences of man.

This is where I start to equate surrealism with haiku. Surrealists were looking to show what was beyond every day. They were looking to show how we take everything around us for granted.

Now think about Basho’s famous “old pond” poem.  Wasn’t it the first poem to say, there is “this” and then there is you interpreting “this”? This is how I build my case.

Let me know what you think!