The Haiku Foundation Forums

Hi,

The current issue is out:
http://thebamboohut.weebly.com/current-issue.html

For the next issue:

Publication dates
The Bamboo Hut will be published 3 times each year in the following months :

    January ( please submit by 30th September )

http://thebamboohut.weebly.com/submissions.html

warm regards,

Alan

Quote from: Snow Leopard on August 10, 2013, 03:08:24 PM
Hi Alan,

It's been a few moons...  Any recent development about this new journal of contemporary tanka?

Would be grateful for an update.

Snow Leopard

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World Monuments Fund Statement:

The ties between poems and monuments are both ancient and contemporary,
abstract and concrete. This past April, in conjunction with National
Poetry Month in the United States, hundreds joined World Monuments Fund in
exploring the special relationship between monuments and poetry by
submitting entries to our second annual haiku contest.

Congratulations to our winners, and thanks to all who participated,
especially our judge, Alan Summers, a recipient of the Japan Times Award
and the Ritsumeikan University of Kyoto Peace Museum Award for haiku.

n.b. As the results are not yet on the front webpage, here's a link to get there, do please look around too. :-)


WEBLINK:
The World Monuments Fund 2013 Haiku Contest Winners
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/announcing-world-monuments-fund-2013.html





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I am in agreement with Don (Baird) that whether haiku is poetry, or can be poetry outside the Japanese poetical canon etc... could be an interesting future question, especially if new light is shone onto the subject.

In the meantime here is an adaptation from a foreword I wrote entitled Cage Fighting (Four Virtual Haiku Poets, Yet To Be Named Free Press  2012 ISBN-10: 1478307544, ISBN-13: 978-1478307549):

The poem, in all its forms, perhaps, to paraphrase Ian Sansom - frequent contributor and critic for The Guardian and the London Review of Books - remains a most elusive thing.  One minute you think you have it pinned down, and the next it's moved, both geographically, and in its mode of transport.  If you thought you knew everything about haiku poetry, here's an exploration into other styles and approaches.

What of short verse, and in particular, haiku and other aspects of haikai literature in the fledgling 21st century?

How do we enter into conversation with these poets, or is a poem an argument? What are the basic intentions on offer that are indispensable to compose these poems?

Fill [...] the granaries of your skull with all kinds of words, necessary, expressive, rare, invented, renovated and manufactured. Equipment [like a] pen, a pencil, [...] an outfit for your visits to the doss-house [...] an umbrella for writing in the rain, a room measuring the exact number of paces you have to take when you're working... Vladimir Mayakovsky, How Are Verses Made? (1926), tr. G.M. Hyde

Ian Sansom stated "The poet invents.  But the reader invents also." And I'd respond by "The poet invents and the haiku writer engages, and if both writers are open they will learn from each other, and although non-haiku poetry may be communication and dialogue between similar poets, both types of writers should take the reader with them." As I've professionally discovered, haiku poetry is often a gateway for members of the general public to re-engage with poetry, who have various reasons in having stayed away from poetry as a whole.

A haikuist should always be a writer aware of other genres, always looking at current practices in poetry, though I wonder if this approach is adopted enough by both poets from inside and outside the haikai practice, as much as it used to be by poets such as Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound etc...  If poetry is dialogue it needs to be ongoing and inclusive and allow non-poets to feel welcomed and included.

Should not all poets attempt to enter the tight cage of haiku and other poetry, with what Johnson talked of, back in 1751:   

"Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the enclosures of regularity." Johnson  (May 28, 1751)

Alan Summers

A Cup of Snow

Hortensia Anderson, New York, New York
John E. Carley, Lancashire, England (sabaki)
Alan Summers, b. London, England
Carole MacRury, Point Roberts, Washington
Michael Dylan Welch, Sammamish, Washington

In memory of Hortensia Anderson
June 24, 1959 – May 21, 2012

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/renku-poetry-cup-of-snow-one-of.html

Frogpond 36.2 • 2012
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/2013-issue36-2/renku.html

kind regards,

Alan

The release of the journal will be a week later partly due to illness, partly due to the amount of editorial work to bring together so many genres, as well as poetry.

Alan

There's a wonderful haiku sequence appearing in Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts Vol.1, No.2 August 2013 called Kesennuma.  The issue should come out on August 1st.
:)

warm regards,

Alan

Quote from: martin gottlieb cohen on July 30, 2013, 05:17:19 PM
Is this haiku, senryu, verse, or something else...?

Detroit summer
sunlight stops at the windows

or

among the sunlit wrecks   crows of Kesennuma

It's also available at Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Holding-Hand-helds-Senryu-Cyber-Age/dp/1490576134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375121515&sr=8-1&keywords=Holding+Hand-helds%3A+Senryu+for+the+Cyber+Age

Looks very nice, and I promise not to tell Bill you spelt his name wrong! :-)

warm regards,

Alan

A brand new collection I can heartily recommend is
noise of our origin,
haiku by Dietmar Tauchner: http://www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=181



"Haiku often contain yūgen, a signature of mystery and poignancy outside the feeling of being sad and lonely. Add the fact the 21st century becomes ever the world of science then haiku is a different kind of instruction manual, its secrets unearthing the reader's creativity, and so indeed it needs to address the fresh century. Noise of our Origin is an attempt to combine the old with the new, and take its readers forward. A wonderful collection!" —Alan Summers

"An ambidextrous poet, equally effective in German and English, Dietmar Tauchner is an energetic contributor to the cause of haiku as world literature. Noise of our Origin presents the dreams and reality of a night that rarely comes closer to daylight than dawn or dusk. Confabulating the source of words and cosmic noise, it is like a radio tuned purposefully between stations and interpreted with a discerning ear." — John Stevenson

ISBN: 978-1-936848-27-0
Pages: 98
Size: 4.25" x 6.5"
Binding: perfect softbound [/img]

"Haiku often contain yūgen, a signature of mystery and poignancy outside the feeling of being sad and lonely. Add the fact the 21st century becomes ever the world of science then haiku is a different kind of instruction manual, its secrets unearthing the reader's creativity, and so indeed it needs to address the fresh century. Noise of our Origin is an attempt to combine the old with the new, and take its readers forward. A wonderful collection!" —Alan Summers

"An ambidextrous poet, equally effective in German and English, Dietmar Tauchner is an energetic contributor to the cause of haiku as world literature. Noise of our Origin presents the dreams and reality of a night that rarely comes closer to daylight than dawn or dusk. Confabulating the source of words and cosmic noise, it is like a radio tuned purposefully between stations and interpreted with a discerning ear." — John Stevenson

ISBN: 978-1-936848-27-0
Pages: 98
Size: 4.25" x 6.5"
Binding: perfect softbound

.

toys from a distant land scaffolding the fall

Alan Summers
Raindrop  A Journal Of Short Form Poetry Issue 1, 2013


.

.

For anyone intending to read or perform live:

Here's a TEDx video of myself talking to an audience (and being filmed at the same time).  Although the talk was only five minutes long, I took along a prompt book as I didn't memorise the whole performance.

Plus an ad lib at the beginning because I was introduced as Alan Summer and not as Alan Summers. :-)

Always be prepared to ad lib, especially if you have rehearsed your piece well, and won't get lost picking up again.

YouTube, Amazement of the ordinary- life through a haiku lens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LxLTiR7AKDE#at=12

Transcript:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/transcript-from-tedx-video-amazement-of.html

Amazement of the ordinary- life through a haiku lens©Alan Summers 2012-2013
.

Hi John,

We both discussed this senryu on another forum, about Garry Eaton's senryu (Garry with two two r's by the way  ;))

I did used to frequent pool halls in my younger days where there was always danger not far, and drug pushers, gang members, posh drunks too who were unpredictable.

Garry's senryu was actually published in Prune Juice which I'm relieved to know is going from strength to strength and an invaluable resource for all kinds of readers.

I hope Garry doesn't mind, but he really liked our replies to his senryu:

8 ball by Garry Eaton

Thanks John. I'm flattered, and I'm sorry I took so long to notice your choice. This one came out of a fairly recent experience at a pool table in a retirement community in California, where I spent a little time last winter. The tables were free, and having time on my hands, I played all comers for a couple of weeks, one of whom was a criminal lawyer, retired, who was a 'good stick', as we used to call a good player. He talked a bit about the OJ Simpson trial, and one thing leading to another, the chains of association led me to combine these two old phrases from the pool hall into a poem. Glad you enjoyed it. It was published in the last Prune Juice.

Alan, that's an acute observation about the social atmosphere in the pool halls I used to frequent occasionally, over 50 years ago. Don't know if they are still quite such dens of thieves, but back then, there was always a certain air of danger, or potential danger, and the lawyer who knows all the angles seemed to me to be an appropriate character to have found there, along with, of course, the guy in trouble with the law, or the guy, as we used to say, who was 'behind the eight ball.'

Garry

Quote from: John McManus on July 19, 2013, 02:19:43 PM
An excellent topic, Alan!

I have always been fond of this one by Gary Eaton . . .

behind the 8 ball
a lawyer who knows
all the angles

There is wordplay here, but it is in no way a simple pun. The wordplay offers two ways of reading this poem. Either the lawyer is a highly skilled pool player or he knows all the legal loopholes and shortcuts one may need if you find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

The second interpretation is my favourite of the two on offer. The subtle implication of this pool hall being full of people who need the lawyer's advice gives me a real sense of what sort of place it is and creates a fairly vivid picture in my head of the type of people who frequent it.

warmest,
John

This is the review that Blithe Spirit published:

All That Remains
Catherine J.S. Lee
pub. Turtle Light Press (USA)

2010 TLP Haiku Chapbook Competition Winner

$17.95  Free Shipping in the US and Canada
Available using paypal. Contact Turtle Light Press on the weblink:
http://www.turtlelightpress.com/products/all-that-remains/



All That Remains is both the title and the dominant theme of this book. After all, everything is in transition, and this collection captures intriguing aspects which we often neglect at our peril.

The book captures a bygone era, both in landscape on a broad visual scale, as well as on an intimate aural scale.  Lee tackles landscape in original ways and deals with exterior/external and internal sub-themes.

The opening haiku works well as an introduction for the attentive reader on many levels, and is a clue for those readers who enjoy losing themselves into a good book.

hometown visit
no trespassing signs
where we used to play

There is the surface meaning of adults revisiting childhood haunts, and finding them changed; then delving deeper, there are layers of interior landscape as well as the physical geography of the countryside.  We find how it affects the individual who almost always takes a personal geography of their upbringing to new places.

Do we allow trespassers into our own private interior landscape(s), and can we as a writer, even if we are actually willing to do so?

Lee attempts this.

Sense of place and identity are enduring and vital themes for writing in any genre, and perfectly suitable for haiku, the shortest of poems. One continuous theme is always a challenge whether for the writer or the reader.  The writer still has to look for variety, especially in such a short poem choice as haiku.

Often haiku are composed with one very short first line called a fragment, followed by a phrase of two more short lines.  Both sections usually create a juxtaposition of different, almost opposing images, jolting and jostling each other to create friction, tension, and resonance, for the reader to enjoy and interpret.

If the fragment is flat in textural meaning, and looks merely thrown in to start a haiku off, there is no frisson for the reader to get hold of, and shake, to see what comes out for them.  There has to be a reward for a reader willing to enter into a contract with a writer.  A flat fragment that doesn't kick-start results in mundane formulaic layouts and templates, that are ultimately frustrating to the discerning reader, especially if they have paid good money on trust as part of that writer/reader relationship.

family secrets–
the shore ledge covered
by rock weed

Here the fragment pulls us into the haiku, and the phrase apparently goes away from the subject.  But does it really?

Remember the opening haiku, no trespassing? 

Do you want to be covered in rock weed, eventually to be choked.  The subtle choice of reading this as a metaphor is offered, whether by design or not.  I tend to think Lee writes direct observational haiku with a constant subtext to reward her readers. There are as many layers to a well-delivered haiku as there are labyrinthine layers to family secrets themselves.

hard frost
she remembers
how he lied

grandmother's albums
the missing names
of all those faces

tri-folded coffin flag –
dry leaves in a corner
of the empty pool

Do we need coffin and empty, are they not redundant due to the clear diction derived from the other words?  As soon I read 'tri-folded' I knew it would be the American flag on a coffin, possibly for a military ceremony.  Dry leaves would obviously be in an empty pool, not a filled one. But sometimes, even though haiku need not repeat the obvious, it can be a useful device when deployed thoughtfully, and when the author isn't really, merely, repeating themselves, and the obvious.

"By the repetition of words the reader is encouraged to shift them around and consider various possible interpretations of the scene...It goes without saying that in order to work it must be done with considerable skill, or sensitivity."
"Repetition - For Meaning and Melody"  Florence Vilen (Sweden July 2001)

This haiku is both a time-honoured shasei model where direct observation is utilised: where the power and echoes of an instant's sentient experience of a moment is carried forward and plunged into the editing process of a draft verse to emerge as haiku.

Shasei is often the technique borrowed for film-making, where a particular object (e.g. coffin) is zoomed in, then panned out, or away, to be zoomed into another area (e.g. leaves in a pool corner) leaving layers to be excised by the reader/viewer.

Death is the natural and only definite part of life, and we should never be surprised by that fact, and eventuality. Generations of families can disappear if death is not replaced by birth and an ongoing gene pool.

Is this what the author is implying?

Perhaps the tightly crafted openness and accessibility is a gift for the reader to take more from the poem if they wish to go beyond the surface meaning. Lee's poems are rarely one-dimensional, if ever, and most proficient writers respect their readers too much to cop out in such a manner when composing haiku. A successful haiku is multi-dimensional, and there are many in this collection worth re-reading and exploring further.

My only criticism is that although there are many haiku directly or indirectly using sound, there are scarce mentions of taste and smell.

Is this a problem?  I don't think so, it just makes me want to embrace a companion volume from this author.  I would love to give Lee an excuse, and reason, to capture the smells of home-cooking, at the house, and out on a (possibly rare) picnic, and packed meals for those tilling the land.

pasture cairn
the old farmer's
bent spine

Good haiku can often work on metaphorical levels as we've discussed.  Not every haiku needs to have a poet looking for a metaphor of course, as a reader or as the author.  Well crafted haiku work on other levels for their readers, and it's the layers of meaning, beyond the presentation of words first delivered to the reader, that make it a haiku worth reading, and re-reading again and again.

A haiku needs an audience, and that audience should be rewarded if they use diligence in their reading.  This is the case with Lee's work: a tightly spun web of haiku that do not lose their joint narrative and lyrical threads that delightfully entrap the most discerning of readers.

If you want to reward yourself as a reader of good poetry, you can go no further than Lee's book.


Alan Summers, With Words

The invitation is for posters to select what they believe is a good example of senryu, one that shows depth, and give a brief explanation behind their choice.

Alan Summers

PRUNE JUICE
Journal of Senryu, Kyoka & Haiga
Issue 10 : July 2013
Editor : Terri L. French
Features Editor : Bruce Boynton

Please do read this issue, as Prune Juice has been sadly missed, especially by my students. I agree with Terri's overview about good senryu being: "senryu are about finding the funny in the serious and the serious in the funny." It isn't just being funny for the sake of it, penning a joke in three lines, but something with real resonance far beyond a joke factor.

This senryu is a good example of avoiding the pitfall of a cheap joke at someone's expense for the sake of a cheap joke or surface only observation, and I can understand why it is Terri's first example in her introduction:

survivor guilt
the carrot nose
outlasts the snowman

Cara Holman

I'd like to see more attempts at senryu that echo Cara's three senryu.

Why does the above resonate for me, and Terri French?  For me, too many people carry survivor guilt whether from wartime or peacetime, and yet the phrase that goes with the first line section brings it down to a melted down snowman with just a carrot to show where it's been.  It's a verse that has its joke but carries another layer or more of meaning.  Most comedians are extremely serious about their art, the art of humor, regardless of their approach live or on screen, and I feel this parallelness of serious preparation and final comic presentation, that carries over some of that preparation is worth considering with senryu.


Another exceptional senryu is by Alexander B. Joy, an interesting writer always worth hunting down:

fountain basin
a panhandler collects
someone's wish

There is the immediate surface level scene of a streetwise person grabbing coins thrown into a fountain for a wish, and their need for money, their lack of respect for another's wish being weighed up.  I also wonder what that original person's wish was, and had it been fulfilled?  Should they have thrown a coin into the fountain or just striven to make it happen through perseverance and hard work instead?


I'm pleased to see two current students, plus a former student appear in the issue, as Prune Juice stands alone signposting what is exemplary senryu.


There's a very moving senryu by Marilyn Appl Walker. These are the kind of senryu that haunt.

decorated —
she draws her daddy
without an arm

Senryu are not One-Joke-Ponies i.e. not one trick ponies, they have the initial bite, followed by resonance and tension, and they cover all the shades of humor, not just the easy and obvious belly-laugh, but serio-comic in a most heart-rending manner, which often Shakespeare raised to a high art.

Senryu work well with a multiple perspective as used by Shakespeare in the approaches to comedy in Hamlet, an ultimately serious and sad story, and other plays whether serious or comedic.  It's the depth of comedy that makes something last the test of time.  Multiple Perspective is a useful technique in senryu, and is often as or more affective than when used or utilised in haiku.

Another favorite is:

doctor's office
she hears the results
of a stranger's divorce

Carla Shepard Sims

Funny on the surface, with great pun play, which turns around broad humor and the sadness of lack of privacy even in a place supposedly confidential.  Who is dissecting the stranger's divorce, is the divorcee present or is the original person of the senryu overhearing someone's life being torn apart or ridiculed while they are waiting for their own results into something altogether different but potentially life-changing?

Read Ernesto P. Santiago's senryu full of light humor and yet treading lightly around kigo, or at the very least a seasonal reference which is fresh and original.  Who said senryu was inferior to haiku, that it also couldn't contain nature (we are all nature) and seasons?

Liz Rule, Australia has this one:

my ex's wake . . .
finding bits of me
in his house

It's both funny funny from a serious event, but funny serious as she discovers her ex still had memories of her despite the breakup, and now she is the one to carry memories of him, not so much because of the break up, but because of his death at a later date. Senryu can have as much depth and layer as the best haiku.

Senryu often have self-depreciating humor ringfenced with warmth, a side of senryu often forgotten by writers and readers alike, here's a simple but fine example:


my stories
getting better and better
four fingers of scotch

Michael Rehling


Joan Prefontaine has this senryu on break ups which uses various techniques to great affect:

end-of-summer break-up
he scrapes the grill
with a wire brush

Prefontaine's poem is very clearly and definitely senryu but on a par with the best haiku, and it also contains a season.

Enjoyed Susan Murata, US, had to read it twice because I thought short trousers first, then a sportsman, before I realised it was a dog!

Central Park spring —
her boxer's toenails
lacquered red

It has a clear Sense of Place and a season, and reminds me of the famous Gary Hotham haiku but with a senryu twist.

distant thunder—
the dog's toenails click
against the linoleum

Gary Hotham
breathmarks: haiku to read in the dark   (Canon Press, 1999)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885767587/qid=1103220434/sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/104-1569557-1267912

Thank goodness I was able to buy a copy off Gary Hotham in person that year. Highly recommended.


But Susan's senryu is just a joy to read, irrespective of being senryu, because the humor can encourage us to make multiple re-readings, of all the other things that she has crafted into a simple 8-word senryu.  I would love to meet the human, and the boxer dog, and Central Park all rolled into one.  A real celebration of life and sense of place.

Kate MacQueen has a tour de force with senryu including a senryu version of haiga. All of them great, but the brake lights will stay with me a long long time because it's not just a simple joke to force into a senryu form of 3 lines, it's actually a lot more.

jammed in
with her anger
brake lights for miles

Gregory Longenecker has long been a producer of exceptional work, and none less than the senryu that appear in this issue.  One example:

coke habit
licking honey
from a razor blade

He produces another vital edge of senryu that we rarely see, and honey and razor is a style to consider when attempting or improving your own senryu, and of course, with any good or fine senryu, there are other layers, if you enjoy being a close reader going beyond the horizontal axis of first meaning.


Lydia Lecheva, Bulgaria gives us a thoughtful thought-provoking senryu with a lightness yet intensity that also raises the senryu bar:

long night
sleeping pills
with the coffee

Her senryu is bitter funny, with no pun intended in the obvious sense, and contains deadly serious comedic touches of the potentially darkest.

Bill Kenney's Thanksgiving is the sort of thing Terri says she is looking for, and it's funny as only senryu can do real funny, and utterly heartbreaking at the same time.

Thanksgiving
the family gathered
in an old photo

Again, note the seasonal reference, and a strong one akin to Japanese kigo in its intensity and understoodness by a large body of the population of a country.

There's a good amount of senryu prose which I hope returns in the next issue, and amongst many, Carol Judkin's had a line of prose which in the context of the whole prose resonates:

We share yesterday's pictures from our digital camera.

For me, it means do not live a half-life by putting a digital camera or an iPad in front of your face, but watch and engage with the life unfolding in front and with you instead.


Also look out for senryu prose from Alegria Imperial, Canada, as she carves her own niche in senryu.


There's a tautly honest senryu prose piece from writer Dallas Hembra, someone I'll look out for again in future issues, to see how this writer goes further and further into this genre.


Also this one was chosen for the introduction, and is worth the second look, as are her other senryu in this issue:


Memorial Day
the closed sign
on the butcher shop

Michelle Harvey, US

It has a seasonal reference and has subtle undertones that underlay a deadly serious sense of humor that highlights a deadly seriousness that too many governments and corporate entities benefit from the military weapons market.

Two erotic senryu from Autumn Noelle Hall, US, which I'm pleased to see in a publication, as senryu, like haiku, can really cover all topics.

There's a great section by by Alan Pizzarelli, and another fine senryu prose piece, this time by Eider Green.

Raymond French gets his chance to be romantic in senryu, with a twist.

Terri does an outrageous senryu prose that really does get to the bottom line, and creates a highly memorable senryu 'haiga'.

Gary Eaton, Canada has some biting senryu, and I look forward to more from him in future issues.

The Confirmation senryu by Marion Clarke, UK is hilarious but also you can read a serious undertone if you want to dig deeper in your senryu. I believe senryu needn't be surface meaning only.

Pris Campbell does a tour-de-force of senryu which are biting, but contain layers as a good senryu should.

Johannes S.H. Bjerg has his own unique slant on senryu prose and haiga which I hope influences other writers and artists in this growing genre, partly thanks to all editors past and present at Prune Juice.

The popsicles senryu is heartbreaking, yes, I use that term again, from Mark Brager, another one to leap to, and discover how deep senryu are, and a worthy companion genre to haiku. 

There is so much quality in this issue. I won't say I felt all them were great, but this is a groundbreaking issue that shows senryu at its best, and supports emerging writers as well as established ones.

It's motorcycle the distance between day and dream as S. M. Abeles would say, and did in a one-line senryu.

Great great issue.

Alan, With Words

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about senryu which I hope this helps to correct over time.

The invitation is for posters to select what they believe is a good example of senryu, one that shows depth, and give a brief explanation behind their choice.

Alan Summers



Prune Juice magazine said:
"I would highly like to recommend that everyone out there interested in senryu and its history, read the article by Ce Rosenow, "Written in the Face of Adversity:The Senryu Tradition in America," in the WInter-Spring 2013 issue of Modern Haiku.  This is an excellently written, well researched article by Ms. Rosenow and clearly shows how senryu can go well beyond light humor and satire.  As stated in her conclusion, "When its focus centers on human activities during times of great difficulty, senryu offers moment by moment reiterations of human persistence in the face of adversity."
http://prunejuice.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/recommended-reading/

Prune Juice is a journal of contemporary senryu, kyoka and haiga published exclusively online, three times a year. It is edited by Terri French and Bruce Boynton: http://prunejuice.wordpress.com/


Although the Japanese poetic form, senryu, began more than two-and-a-half centuries ago as an often bawdy form of verse focusing on human nature, it developed into a form that accommodated many aspects of the human experience. In the early twentieth century, Japanese immigrants in the United States began using senryu to document daily human activities in response to periods of cultural upheaval. In doing so, they instigated a tradition that continues in English-language senryu to this day. Multiple traditions of English-language haikai [body of literature], including not only senryu but haiku and tanka, exist in America, and varied traditions of senryu certainly have been sustained in order to address the vicissitudes of human experience. The tradition founded by Japanese immigrants, however, remains one of the most vital traditions in the American senryu of the past century.

Written in the Face of Adversity: The Senryu Tradition in America by Ce Rosenow
Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Oregon's Clark Honors College USA.

Senryu are short aftertastes like amuse-gueule, or small arms visual gunfire, and potent as longer satirical poems. The examples in this book create shredded shooting gallery targets within the bull's-eye area, and will help re-invigorate senryu and give a boost to the confidence of new and established writers alike.

Its bittersweet, ironic, poignant, truthful, painfully revealing verses will delight the taste buds of readers as I tend to think honesty has a higher register in senryu, if well done.  Even if we don't want to see the honesty of  senryu verse, it's there as checks and balances in our own lives: It feeds a need of a different place than haiku can accomplish.

Alan Summers
Pieces of Her Mind: Women Find Their Voice in Centuries-Old Forms
Omega Publications (2012) ISBN-10: 0985035064  ISBN-13: 978-0985035068

"Pieces of Her Mind: Women Find Their Voice in Centuries-Old Forms" is the first anthology published exclusively by contemporary English Language women poets of three types of short Japanese poetic forms (senryu, kyoka and haiga):
http://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Her-Mind-Multiple-Authors/dp/0985035064/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356115931&sr=1-1&keywords=pieces+of+her+mind


In Pre-Islamic poetry there were lampoons denigrating other tribes called hijāʾ (satire of enemies). This genre of Arabic satirical poetry was introduced by the Afro-Arab author al-Jahiz in the 9th century where he introduced biting humor in the developing subjects of  what came be to be known as the subjects of anthropology, sociology and psychology. Well-written senryu verse cover these areas in all its sub-genres enveloping politics in particular, and family life and everything in-between where needs must. R.H. Blyth said one of the properties of senryu should be to expose pretence, and this is where senryu is master or mistress, take for example:

good ending–
too bad it didn't start
sooner in the play

Joan E. Stern

Politics has been where senryu should stand center, but not in its political views of course:

political jokes
are very embarrassing
they get elected

Karyn Stockwell

Brutally honest when it comes to our busy don't make our lives even more difficult existences:

dead body
litters doorway
bloody doormat

Deborah C. Kammer

The bluntness of not including articles to make the syntax smoother further showcases how we brush aside even a fellow human's demise, if it's in our home area.

Senryu can be as soft as a loving parent's caress, at times, when it comes to our children:

first day of pre-school
I tie his shoestrings
ever so slowly

Connie Chiechi

Senryu is coming back into our lives, and we should welcome it for the wake up call that it is, where all too easily a casual thoughtlessness becomes a callous lifestyle choice.

Sometimes we need shock treatment in the shape of a highly focused ruthless focused sense of humor blow to the head, for a moment, and then resume our life, after we've been pulled up abruptly for a few seconds by something thought-provoking.

The above senryu from the above book Pieces of Her Mind.

Lampoons to Senryu, Alan Summers 2012-2013