Senryu

With Nothing To Say

He Crams The Most Words Into

Smallest Idea

The above is a very amateur personal attempt at Senryu, the Japanese poetic form similar to the more-familiar Haiku with the 5/7/5 syllabic form but without the Nature orientation. It’s meant to be satirical, cheeky and rely on the reader’s imagination for meaning. Does that example not describe those insufferable talking heads and what sometimes passes for discourse? Even this attempted clarification detracts from an essence.

Our discussion article (click: A Lot With A Little), however, goes beyond poetry and writing to address enhancement through brevity as applied to many genres. In fact, the very term “less is more” was originally popularized by a minimalist architect and later transformed by advertisers into a platitude (see, Less Is More). Let us, however, explore this three-line unrhymed Japanese form in the spirit of its original lively, darkly humorous, and sometimes vulgar sense to gather some glimpse of man’s nature e.g.

“the grumbler

finally stands up to leave

then grumbles for an hour”

You will note the foregoing does not follow the prescribed format (at least in English) so we are open to the more general topic of compact wisdom in whatever form e.g. Hemingway’s (purported) novel in all of six words

“For sale:

baby shoes,

never worn.”

Or, perhaps, the Bard himself in King Lear,

“Have more than thou showest

speak less than thou knowest

lend less than thou owest.”

We might share some of our own favorite nuggets whether they are quoted or self-composed.

The painters and photographers among us might share the ways in which the imagination of the viewer can be engaged and enhanced through judicious emptiness. The Fan photographs, reproduced in the focus article, display the black-and-white magic in the power of suggestion.

Then, perhaps, the final form might be dramatic deathbed utterances, full of compacted significance of one’s life, whether real or imagined. Hamlet, in his last words,

“The rest is silence.”

Or, how about this suggestion for a tombstone epitaph, “Good and You?”