I recently received a book called ONE HUNDRED GREAT BOOKS IN HAIKU by David Bader.
The premise of the book is that there are great works of literary art but no one has the time to read them, or alternatively that the modern attention span is so short it is too great a chore to read them.
So he condensed the novels into haiku.
A haiku is a three line poem containing seventeen syllables developed in
I was very impressed and thought I would share a few with you;
THE ODYSSEY
Homer
Aegean forecast-
storms, chance of one-eyed giants,
delays expected.
DE REVOLUTIONIBUS
ORBIUM CAELESTIUM
Nicolaus Copernicus
Guessus whatibus?
Earthus orbits the Sunnum!
Ptolemy doofus.
THE INFERNO
Dante Alighieri
Abandon all hope!
Looks like everyone's down here.
Omigod- the Pope!
MOBY-DICK
Herman Melville
Vengeance! Black blood! Aye!
Doubloons to him that harpoons
the Greenpeace dinghy.
(this could also apply to the Japanese justice system)
LORD OF THE FLIES
William Golding
'Kill him! Spill his blood!'
Marooned lads hold savage rites.
Choirboys lean to prey.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
Jonathan Swift
Thus I was first great,
then small, and much vexed to learn
that size does matter.
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