 You’ve done it now: You played pizza haiku, and you created a monster. As a result, Monster Pizza Haiku is coming. There will be prizes and a pizza haiku book. To say I did not expect y’all to embrace last week’s haiku challenge like this is an understatement of syllabic proportions. No, that previous modifying clause means nothing. But I don’t care! That’s how jazzed I am by the continued response to the pizza haiku challenge: the haiku just keeps coming! I’ve even had multiple haikus from an eight-year-old! And they’re all great! One is a pineapple throwdown. An 8-year-old talking pizza smack in haiku! How cool is that? I’ve had haiku from a chef, and his is also really good. One guy who’s been a Free The Pizza supporter for years even had the audacity to send pizza haiku written by AI. AI haiku – is that the final irony frontier? I don’t know, but it wins recognition for screaming cheek. Dutch, the award-winning pizza dude at TriBecca Allie Café who told me two weeks ago that he’s not creative is now posting pizza haiku in his social media: TriBecca Allie Pizza so so delicious First of three wishes Sweet! You know what else? Even the Fabulous Honey Parker has started writing them—and she’s pissed. She’s mad at me for telling her there would be a book, because now she’s going down the rabbit hole in the never-ending hunt for fame. She just read me a pizza haiku involving snake meat and pea pods. There’s also a pizza haiku about her husband who makes pizza. (When I asked her to write a blurb for my newest pizza cookbook—for which she spent months being a taste tester—she gave me three words: “Make it stop.”) And yes, Honey is disqualified from the prizes, so you’re not competing against a world-famous novelist and former advertising copywriter. But you will be in the same silly little book with a world-famous novelist. How about that? How big a book it will be depends on how much everybody plays. But let it be known: Off of one silly blog post last week, the groundswell of pizzathusiasm for writing haiku about the free world’s favorite food speaks to how each reader of my screed is an exceptional pizza thinker. While other pizza “social” participants are out there, whining about pineapple or char, you’re in here doing something elevated and joyful and silly. You are a pizza haiku poet. About those prizes… The grand prize is both of my top-selling pizza cookbooks, Free The Pizza: A Simple System for Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want with the Oven You Already Have, and The Lazy Way to Pizza: How to Make the Best Pizza Possible with the Least Amount of Work. They will be autographed by me personally, of course. There will be two runners-up who get their choice of one of those books—autographed by me personally. (Or not, if you prefer.) If you win and already have both of my books, I can autograph the book to someone you know and you can look like a hero. Just by the way, I recently signed a copy of The Lazy Way to Pizza to Sebastian Junger. That scares the crap outta me. He writes books about being deep into far-away war zones while I write books about making pizza dough without leaving the house. Courage abounds! BONUS: Everyone who enters The Great American Pizza Haiku Huzzah gets a commemorative certificate of participation in the mail—PLUS THE PIZZA HAIKU BOOK! You deserve to be acknowledged in as fancy a way as possible for your efforts. And you will ultimately get a copy of the pizza haiku book with your pizza haiku inside. You will be a published author. Will it be a physical book or just an e-book? That depends. What’s your level of enthusiasm for all the haiku and hilarity? Amazon KDP has a minimum page count requirement of 24 for a print book. That’s easy. Amazon Kindle requires a minimum word count of 2,500 for an e-book. That’s not as easy. But I can write enough front matter and back matter. (Think: Preface, Introduction, Acknowledgements, “Also by” book listings, “Further reading” links, and other space fillers that may or may not induce a spit take.) And regardless of the volume of content, creating an ebook with my in-house PDF mill requires nothing but my own whims and caprice. So at the very least there will be a PDF edition of the Pizza Haiku Mishegas. But first, you must get writing! Enter as many times as you like with as many haikus as you can craft. The submission DEADLINE is one week from today: You must submit your haiku(s) by September 5, 2026. SUBMIT your haiku here. If you want to submit a whole batch of haiku and in one go, that's just fine. I will happily separate them. Here are your RULES for writing haiku. Remember, the RULE for writing a haiku is three lines with a syllable count of 5/7/5. The first line is five syllables, the second line is seven syllables, and the third line is five syllables. The OTHER RULE is the haiku does not have to be funny. Those are the rules. We also have some TIPS. These TIPS are not RULES, because you can break every one of them and write a great Haiku. But if you take these tips to heart, they can improve your chances of writing a wicked hot memorable verse about pizza. Here now, Haiku writing TIPS Haiku is seeing and feeling. Haiku is nature. Haiku is action. So what does all that mean? Ask yourself… What is the nature of pizza? What do you see in pizza? How does pizza make you feel? What action happens when you pizza? Making pizza. Eating pizza Looking at pizza. But most of all: HAVE FUN I was just watching a video of a pizza maker at a woodfired oven. Here’s what happened next: Disk of dough spins up Red flame licks air, melts cheese Crackle crusted glory And the heat of that inspired this sensation all pizza lovers know: Red splash bleeds into White bubbling lake of fire Bite! Hot! Oh! No! Yes! And then, that made me think about one of the biggest annoyances when making pizza: What the peel is this? Dough grabs, sticks, folds, across self Oh no: the calzone Everybody’s got a haiku inside them. Even the “I’m not creative” people (who are creative every day and don’t even realize it). You can be in the book. You will be commemorated. And you might even win a prize. But first, you must free the pizza upon a blank page. Get crackin’! SUBMIT your haiku here. Looking forward to witnessing your mayhem! ----- The five-star rated The Lazy Way to Pizza e-book edition is now on sale at Amazon. As it says in the book description there: The only special tool: A pan. The only special ingredient: Patience. (Just a pinch.) The only oven: the one already in your kitchen.  ABOVE: The book and the genuine Lloyd Pans that were onsite during a recent Utah pizza night...
Your friends and family won't believe you made this pizza yourself--especially after that incident with the burnt water topped with boiled toast. This is for real: one of the best tasting pizzas you've ever put into your mouth. The cheese, the tomato, the olive oil, the crunch--it's so good, you might never order delivery pizza again. You might even call this pizza "artisanal." "This pizza made as instructed is one of the best pizzas l've had...an artisan-level experience while remaining one of the easiest pizzas to execute." --Kevin Godbee, Chef and creator of Pizza Is My Life (from the foreword to the book) For more info, click here.
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AuthorBlaine Parker is the award-winning author of the bestselling, unusual and amusing how-to pizza book, Free The Pizza. Also known as The Pizza Geek and "Hey, Pizza Man!", Blaine is fanatical about the idea that true, pro-quality pizza can be made at home. His home. Your home. Anyone's home. After 20 years of honing his craft and making pizza in standard consumer ovens across the nation, he's sharing what he's learned with home cooks like you. Are you ready to pizza? Archives
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