Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry For Your...Brains (Paperback)

by Ryan Mecum (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A thoroughly unique and entertaining experience. Ryan Mecum has quite possibly found the only corner of entertainment not yet infected by the zombie plague--haiku--and made me wonder why it took this long, as the two seem to go together like zombies and brains. I highly recommend it to fans of all things zombie." -- Robert Kirkman, author of The Walking Dead and Marvel Zombies

"The most inventive zombie book in years!" -- David Wellington, author of Monster Island

Product 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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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: How; illustrated edition edition (July 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600610706
• ISBN-13: 978-1600610707
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #67,419 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #7 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Japanese & Haiku
  #14 in	Books > Entertainment > Humor > Limericks & Humorous Verse
  #91 in	Books > Entertainment > Humor > Parodies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-Have for your Zombie Collection, October 16, 2008

By	Ursula K. Raphael "Gideon's Mom" (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It never occurred to me to look for a zombie story in something other than novel form; this book was on display by a register when I purchasing some other books. I figured since The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (guide form, obviously) and Day by Day Armageddon (A Zombie Novel) (journal form) worked for me, I would give zombie haikus a chance.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the haikus formed an actual story, instead of just being random haikus. Another bonus was the size of the book makes it easy to carry with me in my purse (gotta have zombie literature on me at all times).

I was very impressed with the author's creativity. I look forward to more from this author.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Zombie Haiku, September 13, 2008

By	Lynne - See all my reviews

The below review was taken from Aint It Cool News. I loved what they said about the book, and thought it was worth repeating it here.

Zombie this, zombie that. Everything and anything has had a zombie version of it as of late. But none fit together better than zombies and poetry. Haiku poetry that is. Known as a meditative form of linking words to find meaning and peace in a 5-7-5 word per line structure, the art of Haiku has been cannibalized by Ryan Mecum in his original graphic novel ZOMBIE HAIKU and the result is simply one of the best zombie reads of the year.

A man starts yelling
"When there's no more room in hell..."
but then we eat him.

Although a series of non-connected poems would be kind of fun, this book is so much more than that. The book tells a narrative of one man's attempt to survive during a zombie holocaust, but doesn't stop there. Like Romero's zombies in his later films, after the narrator/poet succumbs to the zombie infestation, he continues to write Haikus and that's when the real poetry starts.

Always be careful
when you're biting teeth with teeth.
Dead teeth tend to lose.

With nods to just about every zombie film you can imagine (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, Romero's films, even obscure zombie fare like ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST and Bianchi's incestuous BURIAL GROUND) and reminiscent of high concept stories like Stephen King's SKELETON KEY story "Survivor Type" and "trapped in a dead body" episodes of TWILIGHT ZONE and JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN AKA the Metallica "One" video, ZOMBIE HAIKU takes the reader on a journey through the zombie holocaust on a personal level and makes the journey a fascinating, often hilarious, and most assuredly horrifying trip to take. You are literally riding in the brain of a zombie as it eats, shambles, and zombies about.

The two of us take turns.
I chew when he bites and tears.
When I bite, he chews.

This isn't necessarily a comic, but a book that comic book readers can appreciate on a intellectual level and most assuredly on an aesthetic level. ZOMBIE HAIKU is packaged extremely well, done on slick paper and bound tightly in soft cover. The pages are made to look like real journal pages smeared with blood and other zombie oozings. Included are extremely creepy photographs like close up images of zombie mouths, obscured long shots of people wandering the streets, and blurred snapshots that suggest action, panic, and carnage.

The city is dead.
Streets are just filled with people
who aren't quite people.

This is the single best zombie read I have laid my eyes on this year and sure to show up in my picks for best original graphic novel of the year. The book does a phenomenal job of going into the mind of a zombie and does so in a creative and wholly new and imaginative way. If you have a taste for horror, this quirky little book is for you. But if you're a zombie fiend like myself, you should make it your single minded goal to seek out this book and digest then savor it. It's a true gem of a book for those with a taste for the macabre.

Biting into heads
is much harder than it looks.
the skull is feisty.

Highly recommended.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seriously funny, deadly serious., July 29, 2008

By	Patto (Oxford, OH USA) - See all my reviews

"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."