The Zip is a fixed form stanza designed to accommodate any style or sensibility. It comprises 15 syllables deployed at will over two lines, each line containing a weak pause or caesura indicated by a double space.

The caesurae and line break control both the phonic and semantic movement of the stanza, as do the relative indentation of one line against the other with the consequent left or right phasing of alignment between caesurae.

note: the original proposal was for the lines to always centre on their caesurae, as shown below. In practice this proved to be a mistake, sacrificing the flexibility that a more cursive approach allows.

For the purposes of linked verse there is also a short stanza composed of eleven syllables written as a single line, broken in two places by identical caesurae. Occasionally, and specially in tanka or tan-renga, one pause is more heavily accented, and so given as a line-break.

Zips are not easy to type-set in any medium. In html they require the use of tables. Digital platforms using plain text are particularly problematic as they will collapse down extra spaces and indentations. In these circumstances it may be necessary to resort to a mixture of full stops and forward slashes in order to convey the intention:

.............over and over//through fireglow
.....to the wind's//whistling moan........................................sheila windsor

.....within the mountain//men burn out//like candles.............john carley

Internal verses from the Nijuin renku sequence The Winter Sun

As indicated above linked verse is set so that the longest lines have identical indents.

When considering the zip stanza as a haiku analogue it has been objected that it tends to suppress strong juxtaposition. This is debatable. Certainly the zip does not allow for the use of punctuation marks such as an em dash or tilde intended to signify a 'cutting character'. However the combination of line break and parataxis is always available as a way to 'turn' a stanza, and the zip also facilitates the use of a 'detached' single syllable word as a pivot - a device which may be more similar to a kireji in Japanese than is the use of a punctuation mark in conventional English-language haiku.

When using the zip as a 'cut' haiku analogue authors are advised not to combine their principal semantic disjuncture with a caesura: a straightforward two part poem should turn at the line break.

John Carley 2009

 

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