Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry For Your...Brains | 
 enlarge | Author: Ryan Mecum
Publisher: How
Category: Book
List Price: $9.99
Buy New: $5.54
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 82242
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7 x 5 x 0.5
ISBN: 1600610706
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.602
EAN: 9781600610707
ASIN: 1600610706
Publication Date: July 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New Book! Delivered direct from our US warehouse in 3-6 days (Expedited) or 10-14 days (Standard). Expedited shipping recommended for speedy delivery. Over 1 million satisfied customers.
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Book Description
What you are looking at is a document from the early days of the zombie plague. Little is known about the author before his infection--only that he was a poet. This facsimile of his actual journal recounts the events of humanity's darkest hours through the intimate poetry of haiku. Inside you'll find increasingly disjointed and terrifying three-line poems (all in the classic 5-7-5 syllable structure), and follow the undead poet on a journey through deserted streets and barricaded doors. Experience every eye-popping, gut-wrenching, flesh-eating moment of the eventual downfall of the human race from the point of view of a zombie, and gain insight to help you survive--if you can.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Entertaining August 15, 2008
I was impressed by Mecum's creativity in Zombie Haiku. It is a good read. I wonder if Mecum will write Sasquatch Haiku...(or Sasqui, if you will) or Bad Mime Haiku.
hilarious, read this book August 7, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
as a fan of all things zombie i can plainly say that this book is awesome. mecum is a comical genius.
 Not haiku July 31, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I was excited to read this book, and I really wanted to like it. My wedding proposal was an illustrated zombie haiku, so I have a tender spot in my heart for these things.
As another reviewer mentioned, these are just 17 syllable sentences, and not much is done in the way of playing around with the form. This book never would have been published if not for the flood of zombie related merchandising lately- it doesn't contribute anything to the genre in the way of originality aside from the fact that no one has published haikus about zombies yet. The best haiku appears on the cover:
Biting into heads
is much harder than it looks
the skull is feisty
I don't completely hate it, but it was a real disappointment.
Seriously funny, deadly serious. July 29, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
"All of us searching, / all of us with fat stomachs, / still hungry for more." Ryan Mecum has managed to capture the essence of modern American consumer culture with this witty and hilarious allegory. This is great haiku--Like a feast of fresh brains, I didn't want it to end: "Its over too fast. / I hunger, longing for more / while I'm still eating."
 Night of the Living Crap July 28, 2008
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Now I am a fan of zombies (who doesn't love a re-animated corpse that wanders around eating the living?) and I am also a fan of haiku poetry. So imagine my excitement upon discovering Zombie Haiku at my local bookstore.
Everyone knows about haiku. We learn about the form sometime in grade school. At its most generic, it's a three line poem with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third. It's traditionally about nature. This definition is not completely accurate but if you really want to learn pick up The Haiku Handbook by William Higginson.
But certainly there is more than enough room to play with and explore this type of poem, and while it is widely known, it really hasn't been used to great effect in pop culture. I want some werewolf haiku, some vampire, some sci-fi, who knows. There are some really fun possibilities. Haiku about zombies is an awesome idea, and I'm surprised it took this long for a book to be published. Haiku at its best presents a vivid image in a vivid moment that hopefully makes the reader feel something and have an emotional reaction. Haiku make us think, examine words, imagine, and connect.
Ryan Mecum does none of this. Zombie Haiku is unfortunately just a poorly written first person zombie narrative told in seventeen syllable sentences. Mecum is relying on the novelty of haiku to distract from the fact that he has no real writing skill.
The book is presented as a "facsimile" of a poetry journal found during a zombie epidemic. The pages of this journal are filled with haiku created by a poet as he first encounters a zombie, becomes one, and undergoes all the wacky adventures involved in finding brains.
I never quite got how he manages to write these haiku as a rotting zombie constantly pursuing victims. There are pictures taped to some pages because I guess most zombies carry Polaroid cameras. There are also some poems taped into the book, which are torn from printed pages, because I guess zombies also enjoy word processing. It doesn't really make sense and feels really forced.
The book is found by a survivor of the plague and bookends the haiku with the usual "If you find this journal tell my wife I love her" cliches.
The vast majority of haiku in the book aren't worth any mention. There are some decent at best like:
The flies on my neck
are starting to irritate
the other dead guy.
But most don't work out of context at all and are weak attempts to move a boring story forward:
My memory slows
and I can't remember much
but I know enough.
What? The haiku become repetitive and predictable as they are usually two set up lines followed by an eye popping or bone breaking. And of course we have the very obvious "brains" repeated seventeen times.
The story is nothing new, the format is forced and makes no sense, the haiku are really weak, and the book has a surprising lack of fun and cleverness for being titled Zombie Haiku.
Now maybe I am taking the book way too seriously but I was really expecting something great. I wanted really clever haiku poetry about a zombie epidemic. That would be an awesome book! Zombie Haiku is dedicated to George Romero who I can't help feel would be really disappointed. Someone will do better.
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