{"id":11225,"date":"2013-06-21T08:30:10","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T12:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=11225"},"modified":"2013-06-21T08:30:10","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T12:30:10","slug":"haiku-lowku-and-a-motion-comic-strip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=11225","title":{"rendered":"Haiku, Lowku, and a Motion Comic Strip"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahh, I well remember my long-ago Fridays in publishing, when we sat at our desks until noon and then hopped a jitney out of town or flew to Tortola. (Well, people with houses in the Hamptons hopped a jitney; I took the train back to Brooklyn and spent the weekend looking out my third-floor window into the inaccessible row of back gardens behind my apartment, but same-same.)
\nIn deference to that most noble tradition, Summer Fridays, this post will be readable in a few short chunks as the wi-fi on the bus flickers in and out or the captain makes you turn off your electronic device.
\nFirst, a simple haiku (actually, a senryu, since, unlike true haiku, this one doesn’t hint at the season):
\nOpening a book
\nbefore take-off: real paper
\nnever powers down.
\nNext, a lowku (so-called because I couldn’t even stick to the simple traditional U.S. haiku rules of 5-7-5, but instead had to borrow a syllable from the first line to use in the third). And I don’t so much hint at the season as hurl it out there, but hey, it’s Friday morning and I have an imaginary jitney to catch:
\nIngredients
\nfor a perfect summer day:
\nLemonade. Hammock. Book.
\nFinally, a comic-strip musing on the recent buzz that dystopia is dead, long live mysteries or contemporary realistic YA fiction or cowboy space opera or whatever genre will next explode\/resurge:
\nBookselling Life #3: The End of Dystopia? by Elizabeth Bluemle<\/a>
\nby: EHB<\/a>
\n