Grook

A grook (gruk) is a form of short aphoristic poem or rhyming aphorism created by the Danish poet, designer, inventor, and scientist Piet Hein. He wrote over 7,000 of them from 1939 until his death in 1996, mostly in Danish. The grooks are multi-faceted and characterized by irony, paradox, brevity, precise use of language, rhythm and rhyme, and an often satiric nature. Many of the grooks have an accompanying line drawing, which provides additional meaning. This webpage contains many volumes of gruks in Danish. There is also a CD, in which Piet Hein reads some gruks.

Some say that the name "gruk" is short for "grin & suk" (lit. 'laugh & sigh'), but Piet Hein said he felt that the word had come out of thin air. The contemporary "Hunden Grog" ("Grog the Dog") stories by fellow cartoonist Storm P. have, in public opinion, been regarded as an inspiration.

A Grook as passive resistance
Piet Hein was president of the Anti-Nazi Union when the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940. He became an underground passive resister. He found a way to encourage resistance through the use of poems, which he called "gruks" ("grooks" in English), and began publishing them in the daily newspaper "Politiken" under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell".

Grooks in English
Beginning in the 1960s, seven volumes of English translations of 53 grooks each were published and became popular in the U.S. counterculture of the time: Grooks (1966), Grooks 2 (1968), Grooks 3 (1970), Grooks 4 (1972), Grooks 5 (1973), Grooks VI (1978), and Grooks VII (1984).

The following books of grooks are available on this subpage of the website
 * Collected Grooks I
 * Collected Grooks II
 * Runaway Runes: Short Grooks I
 * Viking Vistas: Short Grooks II