SMUG SENRYU, a collection of 240 syllabic haiku-like "itemettes," is intended to be very jokey, very fun. The essential smugness may be seen in how the author of the aggregation strove to cling absolutely to rigorous aspects of 5-7-5 in terms of counting the included syllables; also, each of the individual brief items might seem to insist on being only one basic English sentence. That no wish or attempt ever existed to honor some of Basho's supposed haiku approaches may at least hugely justify the modern and perhaps generic title "senryu?"
