Grooks, by Hailey Miller

-Piet Hein, “Living Is-”

Living is

a thing you do

now or never-

which do you?

Grooks. What are they, you might ask? Or, well, you’re probably asking. I’m not actually a mind reader, so I wouldn’t know. But if I were a mind reader, that would be pretty sweet. Yeah. Moving on. Grooks are short poems with an included small picture. It is meant to show that even with a very small amount of words and lines, you can still write something meaningful. Grooks are usually used for truths and opinions about.

So how did Grooks come into existence? Well, it actually started out as a sort of secret language between people in Denmark after they became occupied by Nazis. It was meant as a bit of comic relief as well as a message. People could talk about a multitude of things and send them to each other as poems. It became almost like a game to see who could send the most radical messages to each other without having the Nazis become aware of it. Since then, it has been become a part of Scandinavian culture. One of the most famous writers of Grooks was a man by the name of Piet Hein. But you don’t really care about its past, do you? You want to know why you should care about Grooks now. Well…

1. They’re fun to do.

2. If you make them complicated, they can go right over people’s heads.

3. You can hide secret meanings in them.

4. They’re relaxing.

5. They can be funny.

To further convince you that Grooks are pretty cool, I decided to whip out my tablet pen and get to work on a Grook of my own. Here we are:

 

There is a saying

that makes others sigh

at the thought of effort

D.I.Y.