Senryuu

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A haiku is an impersonal poem, at least at the first level of reading . It doesn't have a personal involvement. Nor does it express personal feeling, mood, satire, mockery.

For that, there is the senryuu.
Formally it is a poem with the same metric features as a haiku.

It differs however from a haiku in that:

-- it lacks the mandatory word referring to the season
--it may use humor, subjects from everyday life, business, politics, love life or sensual ones
--it is often bawdy, even crude
--the poet is involved by describing himself and stating his opinions

The demarcation line between haiku and senryuu is fluid. A slight change in the expression can move, within the same content, the haiku from one genre to the other.

Many of the contemporary haiku are in fact senryuu.


 

 
Tr. rev. R. Noël