In my excitement Friday, I got some basic facts about renga wrong in my introductory comments. A renga's first verse is, in fact, called a hokku (not a haiga, which is an illustrated haiku). And renga traditionally alternated between 17-syllable verses and 14-syllable verses -- though in modern practice, many renga poets seem to use 17-syllable verses (or so) exclusively. I've corrected the text here.

It's surprisingly hard to find good information about renga online, but this site is a good start (warning: popup ads).