One of the examples below illustrates that traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by the 5-7-5 pattern.

Although only 45 when he set out from Edo (now Tokyo) on his journey into the wild northeast territories, Japan's most beloved haiku master already felt old and frail.

Matsuo Basho, the 17th-century Japanese haiku master, viewed travel as a path to self-enlightenment, to "our everlasting self which is poetry."

Kikaku, one of the early haiku masters, was praised by his peers for immortalizing the bite of a flea.

He is regarded as one of the four haiku masters in Japan, along with Bashō, Buson and Shiki - 'the Great Four, Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki'.

Notwithstanding the enormous size of many of his paintings, Mr. Rosenquist is a haiku master of the American psyche.

Some consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.

There, in 1678, he got to be a haiku master ("Sosho") and began the life of a working poet.

He is thought of as one of the four haiku masters in Japan.

Back in Shinjuku, I stepped into a Japanese dream of the 1970's: Samurai, a bar run by a haiku master who caught the jazz bug.