I'm late in announcing, but I'm done now. Here were my judging criteria. . .
It must have a real 5-7-5 syllable count. If you don't know what a syllable is, your loss. I had to dump some good ones because you monkeys don't know how to count.
As a purely rhythmic point, it must have a tangible pause at the end of each line. An actual punctuation mark isn't necessary, but there must be some kind of break in the rhythm. If you do something like this. . .
I want the orange
book on my bookshelf right now.
Send it to me now.
That doesn't really count because the second line is just an uninterrupted continuation of the first line, thus making it a 12-5 haiku rather than a 5-7-5. Haiku is all about perfection in flow and meter, not just filling a syllable count.
Some of the syllables were a judgement call. Can "business" be pronounced with three syllables? Can "Australia" be pronounced with four? I tended to go with my American-Illinois-Iowa-Arkansas-Texas mumble as the final judge.
"Oranges" has three syllables, not two. My contest, my pronunciation.
Cleverness gets my attention.
All that being said, here are my winners, culled from my blog on Gamedev and the mirror of the blog on blogspot.
On the "cleverness gets my attention" front, I'm giving the blue book to this bit of coded haiku from gamedev user Ezbez. It would've been cooler if it actually compiled, but I'll keep that in mind for a later haiku contest.
while IAmWaiting():
for blueBook in myMailBox:
print "Yippee!!"; exit()
For the orange winner, I have this lilting piece of weepiness from blogger user Michael. Extra literacy-points for the rhyme and the correct spelling of "teem".
In all of our dreams;
Visions of orange books teem;
All are deserving.
Hope you enjoyed the contest. I'm sure there'll be more books to give away, and I'll find new and interesting ways to get rid of 'em. Thanks!
