In isolation it's easy to make fun of many short poems. Take William Carlos Williams's famous:
| So much depends upon |
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens |
Thin? Maybe. But in fairness, those verses can't be read alone. They're part of a matrix that includes the poet's other work, the situation he was in he wrote them, other poems of the time, etc.—all the way up to the entire human experience, from prehistory to the present moment. It's a huge setting, within which the briefest twinkle can sometimes, for some readers, have a richness beyond itself.
| A haiku flutters, Takes wing, and joins the flock of Its butterfly kin. |
(cf. PoeticProcesses (2002-03-03), BreakBlowBurn (2005-05-11), InThePalmOfYourHand (2006-09-11), ...) - ^z - 2009-06-25