In the comments on last Saturday's haiku, hwh asked about the rules. Why not? Haiku are 17-syllable verses arranged in three lines of 5, 7, 5. Their subject is usually nature, or at least, the world around us, not our human selves. Haiku are present tense and straightforward, with no metaphors, similes, or abstract ideas. ("Straightforward," though, doesn't mean you can't play with the sound of the words as well as their sense.) When the same rules are applied to poems about people you have senryu. What you see here on Saturdays is a mixture of haiku and senryu. In Japanese, by the way, the rules are the same: syllables, not characters.

If you're looking for a terrific book about poetic forms, try A KICK IN THE HEAD. I got this as a gift from the librarians up around Schenectady when I did a gig there, and I love it! (And Schenectady's cool, too, especially the library.)