Paul B. Janeczko and J. Patrick Lewis have teamed up to write an incredibly fun picture book filled with humorous senryu (three lines with fewer than seventeen syllables, topic usually light).
The senryu in Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku address a variety of topics, from animals to musical instruments and grandparents. Here's an example of one of Janeczko and Lewis' senryu:
Noah Webster had
no choice except to put
the cart before the horse
Many of the senryu play wonderful word games, like this one about a crow:
Solitary crow
calls its cousin in distant pine
with its cawing card
Tricia Tusa's illustrations to Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku are zany, chaotic, and just plain fun. She has as much fun with the words as the poets do. (The crow, of the "Solitary Crow" senryu, holds a white card with the last two words written on it, for example.)
