Vampire Haiku

Book excerpt: You hold in your hands a recently discovered poetry journal—the poetry journal of a vampire. William Butten was en route to a new land on the Mayflower when he was turned into a vampire by a fellow passenger, a beautiful woman named Katherine. These pages contain his heartbreaking story—the story of a vampire who has lived through (and perhaps caused) some of America's defining events. As he travels the country and as centuries pass, he searches for his lost love and records his adventures and misadventures using the form of poetry known as haiku. As Butten documents bloody wars, a certain tea party in Boston, living the high life during the Great Depression, two Woodstock festivals, the corruption of Emily Dickinson, and hanging out with Davy Crockett, he keeps to the classic 5-7-5 syllable structure of haiku. The resulting poems are hilarious, repulsive, oddly romantic, and bizarre. Read along, and you just may find a new appreciation for—and insight into—various events in American history. And blood.