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Grook

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A grook (Danish: 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[2]. 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.

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.[citation needed] The contemporary "Hunden Grog" ("Grog the Dog") stories by fellow cartoonist Storm P. have, in public opinion, been regarded as an inspiration.[citation needed]

Grooks as passive resistance

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Piet Hein was president of the Anti-Nazi Union when the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940.[4] 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"[6].

Grooks in English

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Beginning in the 1960s, seven volumes of English translations of 53 grooks each (all translated by Jens Arup) were published and became popular[citation needed] in the U.S. counterculture of the time:

  • Grooks (1966)[7]
  • Grooks 2 (1968)[8]
  • Grooks 3 (1970)[9]
  • Grooks 4 (1972)[10]
  • Grooks 5 (1973)[11]
  • Grooks VI (1978)[12]
  • Grooks VII (1984)[13]

As of 2024, Piet Hein and/or his estate have also published the following books of grooks:[14]

  • Collected Grooks I (2002)[15]
  • Collected Grooks II (2002)[16]
  • Runaway Runes: Short Grooks I[17]
  • Viking Vistas: Short Grooks II[18]

References

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  1. ^ "Database of Gruks". piethein.com.
  2. ^ This webpage[1] is a database of over 7,000 gruks by Piet Hein, in Danish. The page says (in Danish) that you can freely search it and have them emailed directly to you.
  3. ^ Hicks, Jim (14 October 1966). "A Poet with a Slide Rule: Piet Hein Bestrides Art and Science". Life. Vol. 51, no. 16. pp. 55–66. ISSN 0024-3019.
  4. ^ A long article in Life Magazine[3] talks about Piet Hein's becoming a passive resister beginning on page 63. It corroborates what is said here. At the time, he thought there would be 4-5 grooks, not the ~7,000 that he later wrote.
  5. ^ piethein.com Archived 4 August 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ "Here is the reason why: Piet is the Dutch form of the name Peter or Petrus, which means rock, stone, and Hein is a way of spelling 'hen', the old Danish word for a whetstone. 'Kumbel', or 'kumbl' as it strictly speaking should be written, also means stone, though more a grave monument. In other words, Piet Hein, or Stone Stone can, in a way, be translated by Kumbel Kumbel. He originally wrote the second word with two Ls, also later the signature became just Kumbel – the name he is at least as well known by as his own."[5]
  7. ^ Piet Hein (1966). Grooks. Translated by Jens Arup. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262580076.
  8. ^ Piet Hein (1968). Grooks 2. Translated by Jens Arup. Doubleday. ISBN 978-8741810942.
  9. ^ Piet Hein (1970). Grooks 3. Translated by Jens Arup. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0773610040.
  10. ^ Piet Hein (1972). Grooks 4. Translated by Jens Arup. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385006590.
  11. ^ Piet Hein (1973). Grooks 5. Translated by Jens Arup. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385029681.
  12. ^ Piet Hein (1978). Grooks VI. Translated by Jens Arup. Borgen's Pocketbooks. ISBN 978-8741846811.
  13. ^ Piet Hein (1984). Grooks VII. Translated by Jens Arup. Borgen's Pocketbooks. ISBN 978-8741871639.
  14. ^ "Books in English". PietHein.com. Retrieved 2024-08-05.
  15. ^ Piet Hein (2002). Hugo Piet Hein (ed.). Collected Grooks I (2nd ed.). Borgen. ISBN 87-21-01859-6.
  16. ^ Piet Hein (2002). Hugo Piet Hein (ed.). Collected Grooks II (2nd ed.). Borgen. ISBN 87-21-01861-8.
  17. ^ Piet Hein. Jens Arup (ed.). Runaway Runes: Short Grooks I. Borgen. ISBN 87-418-2620-5.
  18. ^ Piet Hein. Jens Arup (ed.). Viking Vistas: Short Grooks II. Borgen. ISBN 87-418-5639-2.
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