Kaiser Health News offers haunted haiku

By Dennis Archambault

It isn’t often that poetry finds its way into health policy journalism. Kaiser Health News offered its readers – at least its poetry readers – a treat on Halloween (https://khn.org/news/halloween-health-care-haiku-winner-unmasked-from-gobs-of-frightening-entries-one-rises-above/?utm_campaign=KHN%20-%20Weekly%20Edition&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=78857044&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9_0YZEmC6e83Tkl_JXn1OCQ83sI5Vvih2z8NkHvL8NIyFlyg0II_PfHEpyczai6qZq_tzfkmuH1JICmOzJuxqxmKmkoQ&_hsmi=78857044).

It’s not clear why they called for a haiku (and not a sonnet or an ode) but why not? According to the Poetry Foundation, a haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that is most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time. Sarah Collins, in her haiku, offers a haunting image that for some low income people could be a fatal choice:

Drug prices rise up
Like a witch on a broom
Cannot pay? So die.

Dennis Archambault is vice president of Public Affairs at Authority Health.