ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Friday Something
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
Pink, dew-covered slime/
or gelatinous mortar/
lurking on my plate
The Japanese "haiku," is a structured verse, often unrhyming, with a number of syllables designated for each line. Most often you'll see five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the last.
And most often, the subject will have something to do with nature.
But John Nagamichi Cho chooses to write his haiku about something exceedingly unnatural: Spam. He has dedicated his Internet web site to the subject.
Now, more than 4,700 Spam haiku, written by people all over the world, fill his archives.
The Spam odes became so popular that Cho eventually added two more poetry archives - a Spam limerick site, for those who love rhyming, and a Spam sonnet site, for those who like a more technical challenge. (If you think Spam verse is just plain silly, there's also an editorial haiku site where people write about today's headlines.) You can find the Spam haiku archives at:
www.naic.edu/~jcho/spam/sha.html
LENGTH: Short : 32 linesby CNB