American Sentence
Quick answer: An American sentence is a one-line poem of exactly seventeen syllables, invented by Allen Ginsberg as a homegrown answer to haiku. Learn how to write one.
An American sentence is a one-line poem of exactly seventeen syllables, written as a single ordinary sentence. Allen Ginsberg devised the form in the late 1980s as an American answer to the haiku: keep the seventeen syllables, drop the three-line arrangement and the season word, and let the poem run the way English actually runs, left to right in one breath of prose-like syntax. He published a group of them in his 1994 collection Cosmopolitan Greetings.
The form matters because it solves a real translation problem. Japanese haiku count sound units that behave differently from English syllables, so the 5-7-5 grid often produces padded English. Ginsberg's bet was that seventeen syllables in natural word order could keep haiku's flash of perception while sounding like someone talking. For working poets it is also the most portable form there is: you can draft one at a bus stop and revise it before the bus comes.
How It Works
The rules are almost rude in their simplicity: one sentence, seventeen syllables, ideally a complete grammatical statement with a concrete image and some twist of noticing. The art is compression without telegram-speak. An original example: 'The removal van sits outside all morning, learning our house by heart.' Count it and you get seventeen; read it and you get a small story with an ache inside. Another: 'My daughter numbers her drawings now, certain the museum will call.' The syllable count acts like a picture frame, forcing you to crop the observation until only the live part remains.
Most successful American sentences pivot somewhere past the middle, a shift from plain observation to implication, which is the haiku's cutting word smuggled into English syntax.
Where You Will See It
Ginsberg's own examples appear in Cosmopolitan Greetings and his later notebooks, ranging from street snapshots to political jabs. The poet Paul E. Nelson has championed the form for decades, writing one daily and publishing collections of them, and the American sentence now circulates widely in workshops, journals of short forms and social media, where its single-line shape fits the medium naturally. It also earns classroom time as a case study in form-making: a poet examining a borrowed tradition, haiku, and redesigning it for the grain of his own language.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Write them daily, as a practice rather than a project. The form trains three muscles at once: observation, compression and cadence. Keep a running file; most will be exercises, but a good month yields two or three keepers, and a sequence of keepers can stand as a poem in sections.
Revise by swapping, not stuffing. If you are at sixteen syllables, resist the cheap adjective; exchange a two-syllable word for a three-syllable one that works harder. And keep the sentence honest as a sentence: the form loses its point if it fractures into telegraphese. A handful of strong American sentences also makes excellent raw material for longer poems, each one a pre-compressed image bank.
What poets can take from this
- Count syllables aloud after drafting, not during; catch the observation first, tailor it second.
- Anchor every American sentence in one concrete, particular image, never a general statement.
- Place a small turn or surprise after the midpoint, where a haiku would cut.
- Reach seventeen by swapping words for stronger ones, never by inserting filler.
- Write one a day for a month, then harvest the best three; the practice is the point.
Try it yourself
For one week, write one American sentence each evening about something you saw that day but did not photograph. At week's end, arrange the seven in an order that tells a story none of them tells alone.
Questions
What is the difference between an American sentence and a haiku?
Both use seventeen syllables, but a haiku is arranged in three lines, traditionally with a season reference and a cut, while an American sentence is a single line of natural English syntax. Ginsberg designed it so the count would fit the way English is actually spoken.
Who invented the American sentence?
Allen Ginsberg, in the late 1980s, publishing examples in Cosmopolitan Greetings in 1994. Poets such as Paul E. Nelson later adopted it as a daily practice and helped spread the form.
Does an American sentence have to be a full sentence?
That is the spirit of the form: a complete, natural-sounding sentence of exactly seventeen syllables. Fragments can work occasionally, but if the line stops reading like real speech, you have drifted back toward chopped haiku.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.