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Long Story Short · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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LimLits
King Lear

When you try to divide up your borders
With your highly dysfunctional daughters,
Take some foolish advice:
Seek a kinglier price,
Or you’ll wind up with mental disorders.


Silverlock

A cold-hearted fellow named Shandon
Finds an isle of adventure to land in,
Filled with people who look
To have come from old books.
He’s quite piggish, but still keeps his hand in.

With a singer of tales from the past
Shandon brawls with a well-storied cast.
Will he fall into Hell,
Drink from Pirene’s own well,
Or be barred from barding at last?


Nineteen-Eighty-Four

WinSmith Minitrue [crimethink]
Julia FicDep [crimethink]
[thoughtcrime]
[sexcrime]
Big Brother plusgood [rhymestink]


Solaris

On a planet that’s covered with goo
That can look much like me or like you,
We are tempted to think
That the thing’s like a shrink,
But it’s more like a mirror of Shmoo.


One Thousand Nights and a Night

Scheherazade, called to the bed
Of a murderous Sultan, instead
Of jumping the rails,
Calms him with strange tales;
Keeps her head by not losing her head.


Flowers for Algernon

Intelligence surgery aims
To enable the simple to claim
An acuity spike.
But, Prometheus-like,
at the end mouse and man lose the flame


Stranger in a Strange Land

Poor Michael Valentine Smith,
He tried to become his own myth.
But the knife of the censor
Makes authors much tenser,
And novels much denser than Scrith.


Flatland

A. Square, who was locked in a plane,
Had A. Sphere uplift him and his brain.
His extended suspension
In higher dimensions
Got him legally labelled insane.


The Lathe of Heaven

George Orr suffers horrible dreams
That come true, but there’s more than it seems.
Dr. Haber, his shrink,
Comes quickly to think
That hypnosis will quiet his screams.

But the changes George makes all persist
From the past, so the Doctor enlists
George to help all the nation’s
Overpopulation,
And millions do cease to exist.

George Orr suffers horrible dreams
That come true, but there’s more than it seems.
Dr. Haber, his shrink,
Comes quickly to think
That hypnosis will quiet his screams.

But the changes George makes all persist
From the past, so the Doctor enlists
George to help all the nation’s
Overpopulation,
And millions do cease to exist.


The Man Who Was Thursday

A poet-detective named Syme,
Joined a day-of-the-week pantomime.
Though he and the rest
Wore their full Sunday-best,
They kept fighting themselves all the time.


A Christmas Carol

Old Scrooge by the spirits is wrung
Into goodness–But a thought’s at my tongue.
How much more good there’d be,
And less rapacity,
Had they done all this when he was young?
« Prev   6   Next »
#1 · 2
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Abridged classic lits would come sooner than later
But from what I imagined, this is far greater.
Criticisms aside
I hope you're satisfied.
'Cause we've gout ourselves an immediate top-slater!
#2 · 2
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These poems I read at the start
Possessed of both charm and some heart
Though I can’t leave unsaid
I feel under-read
All the same, Final Thought: This is smart.
#3 ·
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On prompt and creative. In particular, the variation in styles between the various pieces was enjoyable.

That said, I didn't really get the sense of a larger theme, and the fragmentary nature of the piece kept me from getting strongly invested in the story
#4 ·
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It’s unequal to me. Some of these limericks are very clever, some seem just shoehorned in, especially the first one, which is not a very good way to start.

That being said, my ability to judge English poetry is rather limited, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

So yeah, disjointed.
#5 · 4
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I can't say I'm much good at rhyming,
Or metrical syllable-timing.
Still, here's a quick verse
(It's probably worse)
But I've nothing to lose just by trying!

The titles you chose are eclectic,
but connection's a touch anorexic.
From Heinlein to Shakespeare,
I don't see a link here...
Perhaps that's unfairly prose-centric?

I've read nearly all your selections,
And won't say I have no corrections.
But your summarized snark
Seemed to hit on the mark -
Since I giggled, I'll hold my objections!

Your poetry's really quite neat;
Readable, smooth, and upbeat.
I'd tweak a few lines,
Amid'st all your rhymes,
But even so this was a treat!
#6 · 3
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This is cute, and unfortunately that's really all I've got. This is the sort of piece that I look at, chuckle, admire the author's attempt, and then feel bad about having to drop it near the bottom of my slate because it just doesn't do well on my scoring rubrick.

Setting aside the fact that I actually miss out on a decent amount of stuff because I don't know all the stories listed, making some of the limericks fairly opaque to me (I mean, I can infer meaning and idea and check synopsis of stories), but the ones I do know are definitely cute and entertaining. Sadly not much I can offer besides that, though. It was fun!
#7 · 1
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It'll be in the middle of my slate because like everyone's said, this is clever and cute, but I don't get a sense of an over-arching link between the literature you chose.
#8 · 1
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I enjoyed the rhyming in this story, as well as how the poems each followed the different styles of the stories they were summarizing. However, I feel like it wasn’t much more than a few charming poems. It didn’t really tell me anything new about the stories I had read, and it never really got me interested in the stories I hadn’t read.

Fun, but not much else.
#9 · 1
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I've only read three of these stories, so I think I'm going to have to abstain. But the Christmas Carol one made me laugh. :3