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In September of 2010, Ryan Mecum's Werewolf Haiku —the third installment in a series of illustrated "horrorku" volumes including Zombie Haiku and Vampire Haiku —hit bookstores around the nation. Earlier in 2010, P&PC correspondent Ce Rosenow reviewed the first two collections which you can find here and here , but to mark the coming of Werewolf Haiku , we thought it about time to track down Mecum himself . Whether or not the new book is exactly to your lycan —er, liking—we think you'll find something to chew on in the following conversation. Poetry & Popular Culture: How and when did you realize that horror haiku would be your metier? Ryan Mecum: It all happened one bored and stupid night when I mixed a 5-7-5 syllable stanza with a voice moaning for brains and my wife rolled her eyes. At the very moment her eyes reached the height of their rolling, I knew I had evolved English literature to a new peak. Then came Jonathan Franzen and ruined everything...

In April 2010, P&PC turned to haiku expert Ce Rosenow to get her take on Ryan Mecum's 2008 collection Zombie Haiku . Then—and just in time for the season three premiere of a little HBO series called True Blood —Rosenow returned with a review of Mecum's follow-up volume, Vampire Haiku (2009). What's her verdict on the 400-year love story and bloody romp through American history featuring cameos by Emily Dickinson and J.D. Salinger? It's something to hang a fang in—but not for the reasons you think. Part II: Vampire Haiku Vampire Haiku , the second book in Ryan Mecum’s Horror Haiku series, basically follows the same recipe as his earlier volume, Zombie Haiku . The humor, book design, and references to popular culture adapt the basic formula of Zombie Haiku to accommodate the experiences of Vampire Haiku's main vampire, William Butten. Also like the first book, the poems in Vampire Haiku sustain a narrative and are presented as entries in the protagonist...

Jane Austen has met the zombie. So has Abraham Lincoln . The Poetry & Popular Culture Office has been nearly, uh, dying to know what happens when zombies meet poetry as well. And so, when we discovered Ryan Mecum's two books, Zombie Haiku (2008) and Vampire Haiku (2009), we turned to haiku expert Ce Rosenow (pictured here), hoping to, well, pick her brain about what happens when the living dead (pictured below) turn to seventeen syllables for self-expression. Here, in the first installment of a two-part review of what we can only call Mecum's re-animated body of work, Rosenow fleshes out the hunger for poetry and horror that seems to run (where else?) in our blood. Part I: Zombie Haiku   Zombie Haiku's blood-spattere d pages and zombie photos will resonate with readers who are familiar with typical visual representations of zombies—the lurching gait, outstretched arms and vacant eyes are all present here. In addition to that nod toward iconic zombie imagery, ...

Perhaps one of P&PC's all-time favorite moments in TV history:

This week, P&C is blogcasting to you from Washington, D.C., where we're in the process of wrapping up a short research trip to the Library of Congress and enjoying getting to know the city. We've been here twice previously—once for a couple of days back in the late 1990s for an AWP conference, and once around 2003 when we were visiting friends in Baltimore and took the train to the National Gallery of Art one afternoon—so we don't know the city very well. Suffice it to say, though, that we're totally lovin' it. Every day we get up early and head to the Library to do research on Edna St. Vincent Millay's relationship to the Writers' War Board . Then, come evening, we pack things up, return to our one-bedroom pad in Capitol Hill, change our socks and mindset, and head out for the night. We've enjoyed walking the H Street Corridor, the Eastern Market area of Capitol Hill, Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, the National Mall, the Shaw neighborhood, and Col...