Home Alone (Movie: 1990)
Nothing says “Christmas”
like an eight-year-old boy with
abandonment rage.
A Christmas Carol* (Movie: 1951)
Am I alone in
finding Tiny Tim more than
slightly annoying?
______
* It’s a Wonderful Life (Movie: 1946)
Dickens expands his
franchise into Bedford Falls.
Enough already.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV Special: 1966)
Turns out it isn’t
about the presents — at least
between commercials.
A Charlie Brown Christmas (TV Special: 1967)
Aluminum trees
were popular until this
aired. Way to go, Chuck!
A Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
A seasonal cold
compounded by depression.
Santa joins the club
A Christmas Story (Movie: 1983)
In the Forties, a
BB gun was a great gift
for a nine-year-old.
Elf (Movie: 2003)
Believable up
until New Yorkers unite
in song. Then, humbug!
Miracle on 34th Street (Movie: 1947)
Please read my essay
on applying to be a
Santa Claus.
Die Hard (Movie: 1988)
Yippee ki-yay and
redemption through violence —
Christmas in LA!
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Movie: 1993)
Closet Skeletons
tend to emerge at Christmas —
just this time for real.
The Polar Express (Movie: 2004)
Yet another film
in which God / Santa rewards
his true believers.
White Christmas (Movie: 1954)
This theme song will be
the new national anthem
if Donald Trump wins.
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READ MORE: Top Ten Christmas Carol Haiku
BUY JAMES W. GAYNOR’S BOOK
The Power of the Perfect Pick-Up Line: Jane Austen Makes Her Move
Emily Dickinson once famously remarked that if she felt as though the top of her head were taken off, she knew she was reading poetry. And who among us did not read “It is a truth universally acknowledged, …” and feel our heads explode?
Pride and Prejudice’s opening sentence is also the perfect pick-up line. The narrator zeroes in on her reader and introduces herself with what has become one of English literature’s most quoted opening sentences.
Austen continues to flirt with her reader in the first sentences of each of the book’s 61 chapters. So, how better to acknowledge the power of her collective one-line poetry than by translating Pride and Prejudice’s opening-sentence poems into contemporary twists on the classic Japanese 17-syllable haiku?
And here you have it: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 61 Haiku (1,037 Syllables!).
It is my hope that readers will find themselves smiling knowingly from time to time as they travel in this redesigned Japanese vehicle across Austen’s familiar English landscape — and that they will forgive my star-struck attempt at this love-letter-poem to the extraordinary woman who still speaks to us in ways that can blast off the top of our heads.
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I’m so pleased you acknowledge that “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie lol
Perfectly concise film reviews!
What fun! Am giving myself the treat of stopping to simply read and enjoy them! So clever, with delightful understatement, too! Thank you!
I love these Haiku – the perfect literary form to redress the excesses of Christmas fare, verbal, visual or culinary. Jim Gaynor is a brilliant poet and can make me laugh and cry and squirm all in one poem.