Over the River and Through the Wood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Poetry

The following is a guest post written by Karen L. Kilcup, Professor of English, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Angela Sorby, Associate Professor of English, Marquette University. I’m very excited about this new anthology published by Johns Hopkins University Press, so I thought I’d let them tell you about it in their own words.

Who could resist a poem that opens like this:

Have Angleworms attractive homes?
Do Bumble-bees have brains?
Do Caterpillars carry combs?
Do Ducks dismantle drains?

Charles E. Carryl’s “Memorandrums” typifies the animated, modern spirit of our new anthology, Over the River and Through the Wood. We began our project not only because we admire the writing—its ease, its playfulness, its innovation—but also because we realized how many nineteenth-century children’s poems are still vital to Americans—parents and grandparents as well as their children. From the title poem to “Mary’s Lamb” to “’Twas the night before Christmas” (“Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas”), many of the verses in Over the River remain part of our collective consciousness, even if we can’t immediately identify the sources. I remember my own grandmother singing “Over the river and through the wood,” though she changed the second line: “To grandmother’s house we go.” Since she prepared the Thanksgiving turkey and mountains of vegetables and pies, I imagine that she felt just fine about this substitution. Our collection includes some other wonderful holiday poems, including one delicious ode to turkey dinner (Cooke’s “Turkey: A Thanksgiving Ode”) and a comic ballad from the bird’s perspective, “The Turkey’s Opinion.” Of course there’s far more to the anthology than holiday poems, but many of the most beloved, familiar pieces live in that section. Many of our poems offer major contributions to America’s literary tradition, including works by authors whom we don’t ordinarily associate with children, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Sarah Piatt.

One children’s poem, “Mary’s Lamb” was actually the first sound recording ever made by Thomas Edison; you can listen to a scratchy, slightly later version by Edison here. Sarah Josepha Hale’s famous poem draws from a real story about a girl bringing her pet to the Redstone School, now in Sudbury, Massachusetts. You can visit the school from mid-May through mid-October.

Boys as well as girls feature prominently in the collection. Benjamin Franklin King’s “The Woodticks,” a dialect poem spoken by a boy, makes readers savor a tick-free home (and perhaps take a bath), while Mrs. A. M. Diaz’ “Two Little Rogues” celebrates the “hullaballoo” they make when mother leaves home. Boys and girls alike will delight in one of the Technology poems, “The Punjaubs of Siam,” which depicts elephants displaced by the steam railroad.

Over the River has occupied nearly six years from start to finish. We began by surveying familiar poets and famous collections of children’s poetry. But having both done archival research, we realized that there were probably many more that we’d miss if we stayed with the obvious authors, so we began a careful search through nineteenth-century periodicals such as The Juvenile Miscellany and St. Nicholas.

We discovered there and elsewhere numerous wonderful poems by poets with whom we were entirely unfamiliar, including many by children themselves, such as the youthful Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, and Robert Frost. One of my favorites is by ten-year-old Dora Read Goodale. In 1877, “The Grumbler” appeared in St. Nicholas in a section entitled “Poems by Two Little American Girls.” Here we learn that the sisters live “on a large and isolated farm,” high in the Berkshire hills, called Sky Farm. The editor describes them “peeping into mossy dells, where wild flowers love to hide, hunting the early arbutus, the queen harebell, or the blue gentian.” But Dora rejected this floral tribute, penning a grimly comical poem that begins with the grumbler’s youth: “His coat was too thick and his cap was too thin / He couldn’t be quiet, he hated a din.” We leave it to you to discover the complaints of “His Maturity” and “His Old Age.”

Apart from some weird and intriguing titles (“What the Lichens Sang,” “The Discontented Manicure Scissors,” “The Mushroom’s Soliloquy”), the illustrations often dazzled us. There were many that we wanted to include but couldn’t, such as “The Journey” by Elizabeth Shippen Green. Author Josephine Preston Peabody describes a child taking a train ride, and Shippen Green shows him looking out the window. Her castles in the clouds are especially tantalizing:

This image was one of a series that accompanied Peabody’s cluster of poems, titled “The Little Past,” in the December 1903 issue of Harper’s Magazine. When Peabody republished the poem as “Journey” in her single-author collection The Singing Leaves, she regrettably omitted Green’s images and illuminated text.

There are many other great illustrations, both in the magazines and authors’ individual volumes, including Oliver Herford’s “A Chameleon”:

Presenting a collection with writers diverse by ethnicity and region was another important goal, and so we worked especially hard to locate many more fugitive works. We found poems in the periodical of the Cherokee Female Seminary, Cherokee Rose Buds. As you can see from the image below, many of the attendees were young girls.

Colleagues provided crucial assistance, pointing us to important work by sixteen-year-old Christina Moody and the students at the New-York African Free-School. The North Carolinian Moody published her single-author volume, A Tiny Spark, in 1910.

Moody’s contributions include, marvelously, one of our several “Mary’s Lamb” parodies. “Mary’s Little Goat” should delight us all, while “Chillun and Men” illuminates women’s social roles and “The Negro’s Flag and Country” proudly claims citizenship.

Poets from the New-York African Free-School express sentiments like that of twelve-year-old Thomas S. Sidney:

Freedom will break the tyrant’s chain,
And shatter all his whole domain;
From slavery she will always free,
And all her aim is liberty.

The Library of Congress documents how similar sentiments appeared throughout American society: the tintype below depicts a young boy with an American flag and a campaign button for Lincoln inside the front cover.

Image c. 1861-1865. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs

We’re excited that the great poems we’ve found will soon be available to children, parents, and grandparents, teachers and scholars, and we look forward to an extended conversation about the contributions that American children’s poetry has made to our literary and cultural traditions.

Karen L. Kilcup, Professor of English, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Angela Sorby, Associate Professor of English, Marquette University

Happy Birthday to Lewis Carroll

If you have ever read or watched one of the stories about “Alice in Wonderland,” then you know how much fun it is to enjoy the work of Lewis Carroll. This name is the pseudonym, or pen name, of 19th-century author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He used several pseudonyms in his lifetime, but he wrote his most famous poems and stories under the name Lewis Carroll.

When Carroll was growing up, he had a wild imagination and loved telling stories. His favorite hobbies as a boy were putting on puppet shows and magic shows for his siblings. Carroll also put together a family magazine of his poems and talked his family members into contributing other writings to it. When he got older, Carroll also became interested in math and photography, especially portraits of children. One of the children featured in his photographs was a little girl named Alice Liddell, who inspired the Alice in Wonderland stories.

Carroll’s poems were just as imaginative as his Alice stories. In fact, there are two very famous Carroll poems that are found within the Alice stories, as if the characters in Wonderland were composing and reciting them. These poems include “The Walrus and the Carpenter” and “Jabberwocky.” Carroll is also known for a long poem called “The Hunting of the Snark,” which was published in a different book.

“Jabberwocky” tells the story of a young man who fights a terrible creature called the Jabberwock. Try reading this poem out loud. Notice how Carroll used a lot of nonsense words. He left it up to the reader to decide exactly what each nonsense word might mean. Do you think that the sound of each nonsense word (such as “slithy”) helps you to understand the meaning?

Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

How to Write a Poem About Why You Can’t Write a Poem

Here’s a type of poem that absolutely anybody can write, even if you’re sure that you have no idea how to write a poem. That’s because it’s a poem about not being able to write a poem! You won’t even have to think up a title for this poem, since you can use the very first line as the title.

The key to success in writing this type of poem is to let your imagination go wild. Your poem might start off with an ordinary excuse, but as the poem goes on, the excuse can get crazier and crazier.

Here are a few different first lines you could use to begin your poem:

• I can’t write a poem.
• I have to write a poem.
• I don’t know how to write a poem.
• I don’t like writing poetry.
• I want to write a poem.
• My teacher said to write a poem.

So, let’s begin! Try using this as your first line: “I can’t write a poem today.”

Now, choose a very ordinary excuse for why you can’t possibly write a poem right now. For example, you might decide to say that you can’t write a poem because you don’t have any paper to write on. Next, think of a really outrageous reason why there’s no paper available. What if it was because your bookbag had been set on fire? Here’s how your poem might start:

I can’t write a poem today.
You’ll think that I’m a liar,
but all my paper is in flames.
My bookbag is on fire!

That’s a good start. Now the reader of your poem will be wondering how in the world your bookbag was set on fire. In the rest of the poem, you can tell the story of how it happened. Perhaps a fire-breathing dragon wandered into your classroom. Maybe aliens blasted it with a laser. Maybe you accidentally dropped it in a volcano. Your poem could end up being as long or short as you want, depending on how long it takes to tell your outrageous story.

Be sure to end your poem with a line or two that reminds the reader how impossible it is for you to write a poem today. Of course, since you did just write an entire poem, the last line will be very funny because it is no longer true!

It can be fun to use rhymes to make this type of poem. Often, thinking of rhyming words can help to suggest crazy things that might happen next in the poem. But it’s also okay to use free verse (a type of poetry without end rhymes) if you want. A free verse poem could start with the words “I can’t write a poem because…” and then list all the reasons why it’s impossible. End the poem with a line stating that it is obviously impossible to write a poem right now.

Here is an example of a rhyming poem that I wrote about not knowing how to write a poem. Notice that I started my poem with the words “I have to write a poem.” The middle part of the poem describes all of the crazy adventures that would happen in a poem if I were able to write one. Then, my poem ends by saying that I haven’t figured out yet how to write the poem.

I Have to Write a Poem

I have to write a poem
but I really don’t know how.
So maybe I’ll just make a rhyme
with something dumb, like “cow.”

Okay, I’ll write about a cow,
but that’s so commonplace.
I think I’ll have to make her be…
a cow from outer space!

My cow will need a helmet
and a space suit and a ship.
Of course, she’ll keep a blaster
in the holster on her hip.

She’ll hurtle through the galaxy
on meteoric flights
to battle monkey aliens
in huge karate fights.

She’ll duel with laser sabers
while avoiding lava spray
to vanquish evil emperors
and always save the day.

I hope the teacher likes my tale,
“Amazing Astro Cow.”
Yes, that’s the poem I will write
as soon as I learn how.

We Go Together: A Curious Selection of Affectionate Verse, by Calef Brown

As Children’s Poet Laureate, one of my jobs is to select a collection of poetry each month to feature on the Poetry Foundation’s website. There you’ll find my monthly book picks, and those of the previous Children’s Poets Laureate. My pick for February, 2014 is We Go Together: A Curious Selection of Affectionate Verse by Calef Brown.

Interview with Children’s Author and Illustrator Calef Brown

In addition, I interviewed Calef about his life as a poet and about his new book. Here is what he had to say.

Calef Brown

Kenn Nesbitt: Who / what are most influenced you as you began writing children’s poetry?

Calef Brown: My work is shaped by poetry and verse that I loved as a kid. My parents had a copy of Lear’s Complete Nonsense, I loved Lewis Carroll, Ogden Nash, and I enjoyed ( somewhat obsessively ) memorizing rhyming stories, including Peter Newell’s The Hole Book, and Seuss – especially The Sleep Book, which was, and is, my favorite.

When I decided to start writing poetry with the intention of creating picture books, my other main inspiration was music – songs and lyrics by artists like The Kinks, The Beatles, Captain Beefheart, Robyn Hitchcock, Tom Verlaine and many others. The rhythmic influence of pop music, Jazz, and Hip Hop is a big part of my poetry. The poems I write are meant to be read aloud– energetically, sometimes softly, and I think of them like songs in a way. I love playing with the musicality of language.

KN: How did you come to start writing children’s poetry?

CB: In 1996, after working steadily as a freelance illustrator for five years, I decided to write something of my own to illustrate. I needed to create work that could potentially be around longer than my art in the magazines I was working for. I took a trip to India for six weeks with the idea that I would return with a picture book dummy. When I left I wasn’t specifically intent on writing poetry, but quickly found that it came to me more naturally than other more narrative forms. I found that I love the process of editing down and playing with an idea, a poem, until the perfect expression is found– word by word. It’s like putting together a puzzle that keeps shifting. When I returned home I did have a dummy, which became my first book– Polkabats and Octopus Slacks. I was very unsure of myself as a poet, and so in my first two books the poems are called “stories”.

I didn’t have an agent, or any idea, really, how to put what I had created out there, so I just sent it to about a dozen publishers and Margaret Raymo, an editor at Houghton Mifflin loved it. I’ve worked with her on many books since then.

KN: What do you think poetry does for children?

CB: Poetry gives children a way to enter into invention and playfulness with words which is wonderfully free. I have visited many elementary schools, and done lots of workshops with kids, and there’s nothing like the joy that comes when they write their own poems, tell their stories in verse. I have two young children and seeing their verbal inventiveness and love of wordplay is so wonderful. They will often make me read a poem a dozen or more times in a row if it’s one that tickles their fancy. This nursery rhyme ( or is it a limerick?) is one of their current favorites:

There once were two cats of Kilkenny
Each thought there was one cat too many
So they fought and they fit
And they scratched and they bit
Till (excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails)
Instead of two cats there weren’t any!

KN: Tell me a little bit about your career as a children’s author/poet and illustrator.

CB: The fact that my first book was well received and went through a number of reprints gave me some confidence that I could continue with writing and creating books. I have written and illustrated 11 of my own so far, and illustrated a few by other writers. They seem to alternate between books of illustrated poems, like Polkabats and Octopus Slacks, Hallowilloween, Flamingos on the Roof, and thematic book-length stories written in verse, including Tippintown, Boy Wonders, and Pirateria. There have been peaks and valleys, some of the peaks being hearing my work read on NPR by Daniel Pinkwater, who has become a friend and mentor, some flattering reviews, awards, and having a New York Times best seller. I have had some wonderful opportunities to travel and read my work, at ALA Conventions, The National Book Festival, Museums and Art Centers and lots of elementary schools. The most satisfying part of what I do is meeting and hearing from people that enjoy my work. I love it when parents and kids email me and share their experiences with my books and of writing their own poems and making drawings. The idea that my books have played even a small part in adding to a child’s love of reading and poetry is humbling.

KN: Tell me about your book We Go Together: A Curious Selection of Affectionate Verse.

CB: We Go Together came about as a prompt from my editor to create a book of poetry around the themes of love and friendship. I wanted to write some poems that could be appreciated by both children and adults, so I was dealing with non-romantic love and the bonds of friendship and affection. I enjoyed the challenge of writing poems that were consistent with my other books – offbeat, with a slight edge – but absolutely sincere about the subjects– having a best pal, sticking up for someone, being inspired by a friend, sharing laughter, an older sibling caring for a younger one. I wanted the poems to be moving and emotional, but delivered in a playful and sometimes absurd way. It’s the second book of poetry I have written that has an overall theme – the first being Hallowilloween, and it’s quite a different process than just writing poem to poem, and letting the subjects of a collection be what they will. When I was working on the book my family was living in a cottage on an island in Maine, a very special and memorable year for us. I did the paintings for the book on the kitchen table while helping to care for our newborn daughter, and I’m not sure how I finished them, but they somehow turned out pretty well. The book is dedicated to my wife Anissa, and my kids– Darwin and Matilda.

Laura E. Richards, the First American Nonsense Poet for Kids

Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards was an American writer of the late 19th century who published more than 90 books. Born on February 27, 1850, she is best known for the nonsense poems she created for children to enjoy, such as “Eletelephony.”

Laura Richards’ parents were famous before she was born. Her father was Samuel Gridley Howe, who ran the Perkins Institute for the Blind where Helen Keller and Laura Bridgman were educated. (In fact, he named his own daughter after Laura Bridgman.) Her mother, Julia Ward Howe, wrote the words to a famous song called “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” When Laura Richards grew up, she and her sister wrote a biography of their mother that won a Pulitzer Prize.

In addition to writing many poems and works of fiction, Richards was a philanthropist. She was very concerned about finding ways to help the people in the town where she lived with her husband. For example, Richards helped to change the practice of making children work at difficult jobs as if they were adults, which was common at the time.

One of Richards’s best books of nonsense poetry is called Tirra Lirra. The poems in this book use techniques like rhythm, alliteration, and startling imagery to tell an imaginative story.

Here is the poem “Eletelephony,” in which Richards uses several funny and surprising variations on the word “elephant.” This technique gives us the impression that the poet has gotten all tangled up in her words, just like the elephant gets his trunk tangled in the telephone—or was it a telephunk?

Eletelephony

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I’ve got it right.)
Howe’er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I’d better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

Poetry Aloud Here 2: Sharing Poetry with Children by Sylvia Vardell

If you are a teacher, librarian, or other adult who uses children’s poetry as an educational tool, Poetry Aloud Here 2: Sharing Poetry with Children by Sylvia M. Vardell is a book you need to know about. This outstanding resource provides educators with tons of practical information on teaching poetry in both formal and informal settings, including including how and why to promote poetry to children, strategies for presenting poetry to kids, what kinds of poems children enjoy, biographies of many important children’s poets, follow-up activities, web resources, and so much more.

This revamped and expanded edition of the original Poetry Aloud Here! details best practices gleaned from years in the field, with numerous suggestions that cross the curriculum from literature to science and math, and includes expanded lists of poems, in-depth poet profiles, book-poetry pairings, and other tools useful for programming and collection development.

About the Author

Sylvia M. Vardell is currently Professor at Texas Woman s University in the School of Library and Information Studies, where she teaches graduate courses in children s and young adult literature. She has published articles in Book Links, Language Arts, English Journal, The Reading Teacher, The New Advocate, Young Children, Social Education, and Horn Book, as well as several chapters and books on language and literature. A presenter at many state, regional, national, and international conferences, Vardell organizes the “Poetry Round Up” session at the Texas Library Association conference. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1983.

Where to Buy this Book

Rhyming Musical Instruments and Terms List

If you ever find yourself writing a poem that involves music, especially a list poem, you may find it helpful to have a list of musical instruments and musical terms that rhyme with one another. Here are some common ones that you could use:

• Autoharp / harp / sharp
• Bach / rock
• Band / baby grand / band stand / grand / music stand
• Bang / clang / rang / sang
• Baritone / microphone / saxophone / tone / trombone / xylophone
• Bass / instrument case
• Blare / snare
• Bong / singalong / song
• Cacophony / euphony / key of C / symphony / tympani
• Castanet / clarinet / cornet / duet / minuet / quartet
• Chime / rhyme / time
• Choir / lyre
• Chord / record / musically scored
• Clap / rap / tap
• Cymbal / timbal
• Drum / harmonium / hum / strum
• Flat / high hat / rat-a-tat / scat
• Flute / lute / toot
• Glide / elide
• Group / music loop / troupe
• Guitar / sitar
• Hear / play by ear
• Juke / uke
• Mandolin / violin
• Nat King Cole / rock-n-roll
• Note / throat
• Piano / soprano
• Pianola / Victrola / viola
• Psalm / tom
• Ring / sing / string

Click here for other lists of rhyming words.

My Teacher Calls Me Sweetie Cakes – Animated Video

Here is the brand new animated video for the poem “My Teacher Calls Me Sweetie Cakes,” from the book Revenge of the Lunch Ladies.

I visit a lot of schools every year, and every once in a while I meet a student whose mother is a teacher at the school. Once I even met a boy who’s father was the Principal! And I always wondered what kinds of funny things might happen to a student whose mother was also his or her teacher. Here’s one thing I think might happen.

TIME for Kids 2014 Poetry Contest Winners

Illustration by Deam Macadam for TFK

Congratulations to the winners of the 2014  TIME for Kids Poetry Contest! I had so much fun reading all the entries and selecting the winners, plus a few “honorable mentions.” There were over 2100 entries this year; the most ever!

The grand-prize winning poem this year was by 10-year-old Benjamin Ecsedy. His poem “Mess” was absolutley wonderful. His prizes include a free autographed copy of my book The Armpit of Doom and a free online author visit for his class.

In addition to Benjamin’s wonderfully funny poem, the runner-up winners were “Stranded in Paradise” by 14-year-old John Vernaglia, “My Elephant” by 10-year-old Maddy Harmon, and “Expelled” by 12-year-old Ella Smith.

You can read all of the winners, plus several honorable mentions on the TIME for Kids website, and in TIME for Kids Magazine.

A big congratulations to all of the winners and honorable mentions, and to all of the kids who took the time to write a poem and submit it. If I could have, I would have picked a hundred winners. There were at least that many poems that were true winners in my eyes.

Poems Organized by Grade Level

There are always at least 100 funny poems for kids on Poetry4kids.com, which you have always been able to choose from based on their popularity or subject matter. Now I’ve also added the ability to select poems based on their reading level.

To view the poems on Poetry4kids.com organized by reading level, simply click on Poems by Reading Level in the menu. My hope is that this will help make it easier for teachers to select poems at an appropriate reading level for their students.

The poems are sorted by grade level based on their ATOS readability score, the reading level system used by the Accelerated Reader program. Because these scores are computer generated, they may not be 100% accurate, but should still make it easier to find poems suitable for students of any given age.

Once you select a poem, you can always find out more about it’s grade level measures and text statistics (number of words, number of lines, average word length, etc.) by scrolling down to the bottom of the poem’s page.

Rhythm in Poetry – Okie Dokie, Here’s the Trochee

In the last Rhythm in Poetry lesson, we talked about the “iamb,” a two-syllable poetic foot with the stress on the second syllable. The reverse of the iamb is called the “trochee” (pronounced TRO-kee). Like the iamb, the trochee is a two-syllable foot. But instead of being stressed on the second syllable, trochees are stressed on the first syllable. For example, the word “today” is an iamb because we emphasize the “day” not the “to.” (That is, we say “to-DAY,” not ‘TO-day.”) But the word “candy” is a trochee, because we emphasize the “can” and not the “dy.” (It’s pronounced “CAN-dee,” not “can-DEE.”) Look at it like this:

When a poem is written using trochees, we say it is “trochaic” (pronounced “tro-KAY-ik”). In fact, the word “trochee” is trochaic because it is pronounced “TRO-key” with the stress on the first syllable. If I were to say the word “trochee” over and over, it would look like this:

/  -     /  -     /  -     /  -
Trochee, trochee, trochee, trochee

And that is trochaic rhythm. My poem “Gerbil, Gerbil, On the Run” is written entirely in trochaic. Here’s how it starts:

/  -    /  -    /  -   /
Gerbil, gerbil, on the run
/  -    /      -    /     -    /
in your wheel, that looks like fun.
/   -    /  -  /  -    /
You must be in awesome shape.
/   -   /  -   /  - /
Are you trying to escape?

Now you might notice that the final foot of each line in this poem only has one syllable (run / fun, shape / cape). It’s perfectly okay to drop the final unstressed syllable in trochaic lines in order to have “single rhymes” instead of “double rhymes” at the ends of the lines. (Poets have a fancy name for this. When we drop the final unstressed syllable, we call it “catalexis,” which you don’t need to remember, but I like the word because it sounds like a cat driving a Lexus.)

The poet Edgar Allan Poe is most famous for his poem “The Raven.” Much of this poem is written in trochaic. For example, the first line reads like this:

/    -/   - /  -     /    -  /     - /  -      /    -   /   -
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Another of the most famous trochaic poems is William Blake‘s “The Tyger” which begins like this:

/ -    / -    /   -   /
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
/  -   /  -    /  -   /
In the forests of the night

Do you see how the beginnings of each two-syllable foot are stressed (pronounced more strongly than the second syllable)? This is what makes these poems trochaic.

Why Use the Trochee?

Trochaic rhythm is not used very often in English-language poetry because this rhythm tends to make long poems a little boring or “monotonous” to read. Usually, only short poems like “Tyger, Tyger” are written in trochaic; otherwise readers might get tired of reading after a while. So why would you want to write your poems in trochees?

One important reason to try your hand at writing trochaic poems is to see how this rhythm can make your poems sound different. As you are learning to write poetry, it’s good practice to try writing poems with different rhythms, different line lengths, and different rhyme schemes. Not only will this help you decide what styles you like best, but it will help you become a better poet.

How to Start

If you’re ready to try writing a poem of your own in trochaic rhythm, I suggest you start with a two-syllable word like “candy,” “monkey,” “apple,” “pickle,” etc. Write it down, and then see if you can write a whole trochaic line, like this:

/  -    /  -    /  - /
Monkey, monkey, in a tree.

If you want to rhyme your poem, see if you can add another line with the same number of trochaic feet, like this:

/  -    /  -    /  - /
Monkey, monkey, in a tree.
/    -   /     -   /     -  /
Throwing pears and plums at me.

Once you’re off to a good start, keep on writing and see if you can tell a whole story in trochees!

In the next Rhythm in Poetry lessons, I will show you some of the other types of feet you can use to write poems, including feet with three syllables. In the meantime, have fun with iambic and trochaic rhythms.

10 Ways to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day

You might have heard that every year, the month of April is National Poetry Month. But did you know that Thursday, April 24 is Poem in Your Pocket Day? This is a day when people all over the United States will be sharing their favorite poem with their families, classmates, co-workers, and neighbors.

The town of Charlottesville in Virginia has an annual tradition of celebrating this day together. Lots of people volunteer to pass out printed poems all over town, and they also have an open mic poetry event the night before Poem in Your Pocket Day to kick off the celebration. There are also special Poem in Your Pocket events every year in other large cities, such as New York.

Here are 10 easy and fun ways to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day this year:

1. Write a short poem on an index card and tape or thumbtack it to a public bulletin board. Or you could use just one stanza from a longer poem. Be sure to give the title and author so that people who read it can look up the full poem on their own.
2. If you don’t have a pocket, think of other places to store folded-up poems. How about tucked into the top of in your sock?
3. Email your favorite poem to a pen pal or family member who lives far away.
4. Ask your parent, teacher, or school librarian to help you arrange a poem swap for your class or neighborhood, in which everyone brings a printed copy of their favorite poem and swaps it for someone else’s poem.
5. If you use Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you can post a photo of your favorite poem and include the hashtag #pocketpoem.
6. Leave a printed copy of your poem between the pages of a library book. It will be a surprise for the next reader!
7. If your family often visits a senior center or nursing home, print several copies of a poem to share and give it to the people you see when you visit that day. Or ask the person at the information desk if you can leave a pile of poems for visitors to take to their loved ones.
8. Encourage people to ask you about your poem. You can do this by wearing a sticker on your shirt or bookbag that says, “It’s Poem in Your Pocket Day! Ask me about my favorite poem.”
9. If your family members take their lunch to school or work, slip a poem into their lunch bags. Better yet, put in two poems—one for them to keep and one for them to give away to a friend!
10. Come up with creative ways to share your poem if you don’t want to print out or write out your poem on paper. For example, you could write a short poem on the back of your hand and read it out loud to people you meet.

No matter how you decide to celebrate, you can make Poem in Your Pocket Day special and fun for yourself—and everyone you meet. Just choose a poem to share, and the possibilities are endless!

Happy Birthday to Edward Lear!

May 12 is the birthday of English poet Edward Lear, who would be 202 years old if he were still alive. He is well known for his drawings as well as for the poems and limericks that he wrote. Lear has been called a nonsense poet because he liked to use made-up words along with real ones in his poems. He also wrote about fanciful things that wouldn’t happen in real life. You may have read or heard his most famous poem, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which is often taught to young children. Here is a short excerpt:

They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Edward Lear grew up near London as one of 21 children in his family. He was raised by his sister Ann, who was more than 20 years older than him. Lear was often sick during his childhood, suffering from asthma and epilepsy among other health problems.

Lear’s drawings and paintings of animals were first published when he was a teenager. As an adult, he enjoyed traveling to faraway places and painting landscapes of what he saw in his travels. He published his first book of nonsense limericks in 1846.

A limerick is a kind of short, funny poem that has five rhyming lines and starts with the words, “There was a…” Limericks usually have the same kind of rhythm. Edward Lear didn’t invent this kind of poem, but he did help to make it popular.

Here is one of Edward Lear’s nonsense limericks. Try reading it out loud and notice the rhythm and rhyme patterns:

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”

5 Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block

“Writer’s block” is an expression that describes how it feels when it seems like you can’t write. Maybe you’re working on a particular poem and then you just start to feel stuck, not knowing how to finish it. Or maybe you sit down to write and you just can’t think of anything at all to write about. Either way, writer’s block can feel pretty discouraging.

The good news is that there are lots of easy ways to break free from writer’s block and start writing again. Next time you feel blocked, give one of these tips a try:

1. Get Goofy

Writer’s block can make you feel very serious, so one way to break free is to get silly. Try to write the most awful, ridiculous poem in the world. Write a poem complaining about how you can’t possibly write a poem right now because of all your terrible problems. Or write your poem from the point of view of your dog, or your lunch, or the dust bunnies under your bed.

2. Make a List

Sometimes it helps to forget about writing in a poetry format for a while. Instead, just list all the things you want someone to know about what your poem will be like after you write it. Or, if you don’t like making lists, just start writing or typing the words “This poem is going to be about…” and then finish the sentence. Try to keep writing without stopping for at least five minutes. When you’re done, you’ll have lots of ideas about how to finish your poem.

3. Try Something Different

Maybe you need a totally different way to write for a while. Instead of writing a free verse poem, try your hand at rhyming couplets. Or instead of sitting at your desk to write, stand up. If you’re really stuck, stand on one foot, or write with the opposite hand for a change. Or get outside of your usual writing place to sit in a park, in the passenger seat of a car, or in a bookstore or library.

4. Go for a Walk

Physical activity is really good for busting you out of a writing rut and resetting your brain. So is a change of scene! You can go for a walk in your neighborhood, or take a bike ride, or jump on a trampoline, or even take a dance break—anything to get your body moving and distract your brain. You can come back to your writing in a few minutes, or even another day, and you’ll have fresh ideas.

5. Be a Reader Instead

Sometimes you can take the pressure off and inspire yourself at the same time. How? By picking up another writer’s work and enjoying it. It doesn’t even have to be poetry. You could read a short story, a graphic novel, or any kind of writing that reminds your brain what great writing can do. Reading can be a great warm-up for anytime you want to write a poem, or it can be a break from writing when your mind feels stuck.

No matter what you decide to try for your writer’s block, keep in mind that the best way to get un-stuck is to do something different. Start anywhere! Even a very small change can help a lot, and you’ll be writing poems again in no time.

My Writing Process – Blog Tour

My friend Kelly Milner Halls recently participated in the Writing Process Blog Tour on her blog and asked me if I would follow her in the tour, answering a few questions about my writing. Of course, I said yes. Kelly is such a wonderful children’s author and all-around awesome human being that I thought it would be a great way to let my readers know about her and her books. She also asked Claire Rudolf Murphy to participate, and she should be posting her answers on her blog in the next couple of days.

I’ve asked Douglas Florian and Nikki Grimes to follow me in this blog tour, so next week you should be able to read about what they are working on and how and why they write what they do.

So, without further ado, here are my answers to the four questions posed on this blog tour:

What am I currently working on?

I’m currently working on a rhyming picture book. In the past, most of my books have been poetry collections, but these days I find myself writing more picture books.

How does my work differ from others in my genre?

With a few notable exceptions (e.g., Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Douglas Florian) most children’s poetry books aren’t humorous. They tend to be more informational; poems about nature, animals, etc. So I guess it’s fair to say that my books differ from most children’s poetry books in that they are funny. At least, I hope they are.

Why do I write what I write?

As a child, I loved hearing and reading funny poems and songs. So mostly I write the same sorts of things that I loved reading as a kid. I also loved reading kid detective novels, but I haven’t tried my hand at one of those yet.

What is my writing process?

Any time I get an idea, I jot it down in a note on my phone or laptop using Evernote.

I don’t have a regular writing time or location. I write whenever I can make time, and I do it wherever I happen to be. Usually that’s at home, but often I will go the the library or a coffee house to work.

When I am able to carve out a little time to write, I start by going through my ideas to find one that I would like to work on. I do all of my writing on my laptop computer using a number of programs, including Evernote, Rhymesaurus, Rhymezone.com and Thesaurus.com. I write and revise, write and revise, write and revise, until I feel like there is nothing else I can do to improve the poem. When I’m finished writing t, I file the poem in Evernote and then come back a day or two later. Often times I will see something I didn’t notice before, and I’ll make a few final revisions. At that point, the poem is usually ready for posting on my website or including in a manuscript.

My Puppy Punched Me In the Eye – Video

Here is a video of me reciting my poem “My Puppy Punched Me In the Eye,” from the book My Hippo Has the Hiccups.

I’ve had a lot of different pets, including cats, dogs, rabbits, and even a ferret. One thing they had in common is that they all liked jumping on me. I’ve always thought it would be funny if pets could learn how to do human things, such as make pizza or play musical instruments. Here’s what I think might happen if they took kung fu lessons.

My Teacher Took My iPod – Video

Here is a video of me reciting my poem “My Teacher Took My iPod,” from the book Revenge of the Lunch Ladies.

When I was a student, iPods hadn’t been invented yet, but there were still plenty of things you weren’t allowed to have at school, and teachers would take them from you and return them at the end of the day, just like they do today with mobile phones and music players.

Rhyming Places List

If you ever find yourself writing a poem that involves geographical locations — cities, states, countries, etc. – you may find it helpful to have a list of places that rhyme with one another. Here are some that you could use:

NEW BOOK! The Biggest Burp Ever: Funny Poems for Kids

Today marks the release of my newest collection of hilarious children’s poetry. The Biggest Burp Ever: Funny Poems for Kids contains 70 new kid-tested funny poems about crazy characters, funny families, peculiar pets, comical creatures, and much, much more, all with wonderful illustrations by Rafael Domingos.

I promise you are going to love this book. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what others have to say about it:

Take a deep breath. Hold on tight. Fasten your seat belt! The Biggest Burp Ever is another epic romp of rib-tickling rhyme on the endless roller coaster ride known as Kenn’s prolific pen! –Charles Ghigna – Father Goose®

Kenn Nesbitt has an amazing power: He’s a poet whose punchlines aim straight for the funny bone and rarely, if ever, miss. Here, in this brand-new collection, the Master of the Looney-verse pays another welcome visit to planet Mirth, delivering a pun-packed pummeling that is guaranteed to leave young readers everywhere reeling with joy. –Graham Denton, children’s poet and anthologist

The Biggest Burp Ever by Kenn Nesbitt dials up the silly factor to 11. With a verbal palette as bright as childhood itself, the Children’s Poet Laureate covers topics from Xboxes to pizzas to pets and delivers a chuckle on every one. Fair warning: Upon reading one of his punchlines, I had milk coming out of my nose, and I hadn’t even drunk any. –Brian P. Cleary, author of the Words are CATegorical series

The Biggest Burp Ever is now available in paperback from Amazon.com for just $9.95. In addition the the paperback, you can also read The Biggest Burp Ever as an eBook for Amazon Kindle for just $2.99. It will be available from Barnes & Noble and other booksellers soon.

2015 TIME for Kids Poetry Contest

Calling all poets! TIME For Kids has a challenge for you: Write a funny, rhyming poem. It must be an original poem that does not copy another poet’s work. Enter it in the TIME For Kids Poetry Contest. The grand-prize winner will receive an online class visit from Children’s Poet Laureate Kenn Nesbitt. The grand-prize winner and three finalists will each get a signed copy of Nesbitt’s newest book of poetry, The Biggest Burp Ever: Funny Poems for Kids, and their poems will be published at timeforkids.com.

WHAT: Write a funny, rhyming poem and enter it in the TFK Poetry Contest. Poet Kenn Nesbitt will look for originality, creativity, humor and rhyme in the style of his own poetry. To read some of Nesbitt’s poems, go to poetry4kids.com.

HOW: Enter your original poem in the online entry form at timeforkids.com/2015poetrycontest. Be sure to include your first name only, your e-mail address and your parents’ e-mail address. Contest is open to students who are 8 to 13 years old.

DEADLINE: January 30, 2015

Read the official rules here and a Q&A about the contest here.