Poet’s Work

by Lorine Niedecker

Grandfather

   advised me:

         Learn a trade

I learned

   to sit at desk

         and condense

No layoff

   from this

         condensery

From Collected Works, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2002, page 194. For me, together with juxtaposition, the art of haiku is the art of condensery, yet my sense is that poets should not make the poem as short as possible but as short as necessary. There's a crucial difference.