Senryu wears the same seventeen-syllable shape but turns the lens from nature to people. Where haiku reveres, senryu watches — wryly, sometimes mercilessly, always honestly. Named for the eighteenth-century poet Karai Senryū, it is the form of human foible: vanity, self-deception, the small daily gap between who we say we are and who we plainly are.
It works the way catching your own reflection in a shop window works — the half-second before you compose your face. Senryu is funny the way the truth is funny: because it is exact.
Senryu is funny the way the truth is funny: because it is exact.View examples on the main page →