POETRY

Jack Prelutsky, Children’s Poet Laureate Award

Winner

“Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some

combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.”

What is Poetry?

Webster’s dictionary defines poetry as: “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm”

What is meaning?

Poetry provides meaning and evokes emotion

Snow on the Trees

Somebody painted The trees last nightCrept in and colored themWhite on white.

When I awoke,The tree limbs shoneAs white as milk,As bleached as bone

As white as wool,As chalk, as ceamAs white as ghostsIn a white-night dream.

Just one day pastThey wore dark brownToday they wearA diamond crown.

Somebody painted The trees last nightWith ivory paintpotsWhite on white.

Jane Yolen uses similies, alliteration, and personification to create meaning and evoke emotion.

Sound

Welcome to the Night

To all of you who crawl and creepwho buzz and chirp and hoot and peepwho wake at dusk and throw off sleep:Welcome to the night.

To you who make the forest sing,who dip and dodge on silent wing,who flutter, hover, clasp, and clingWelcome to the night!

Come feel the cool and shadowed breeze,come smell your way among the trees,come touch rough bark and leathered leaves:Welcome to the night.

The night’s a sea of dappled dark,the night’s a feast of sound and spark,the night’s a wild, enchanted park.Welcome to the night!

Alliteration, assonance, and consonance create the sounds that place the reader in “the

night”. These sounds create such visual images as bats flying and

insects chirping.

RhythmMeter in a poem implies a regular rhythm

The Turkey Shot Out of the OvenThe turkey shot out of the ovenand rocketed into the air,it knocked every plate off the tableand partly demolished a chair.

It ricocheted into a cornerand burst with a deafening boom,then splattered all over the kitchencompletely obscuring the room.

It stuck to the walls and the windows,it totally coated the floor,there was turkey attached to the ceilingwhere there’d never been turkey before.

It blanketed every appliance,It smeared every saucer and bowl,there wasn’t a way I could stop it,that turkey was out of control.

I scraped and I scrubbed with displeasure,and thought with chagrin as I mopped,that I’d never again stuff a turkeywith popcorn that hadn’t been popped.

LimerickUsually told in five lines, these humorous poems belong to the nonsense class.

Beware that you don’t get too chummywith Martin McIver the mummy.

He has termites and mothsinside of his cloths

and he’d rather have YOU in his tummy.

Nursery RhymesHumpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Nursery rhymes utilize poetic devices such as

assonance, consonance, and alliteration. In this rhyme

Humpty Dumpty is personified.

Nursery Rhyme & Allusion

In order to appreciate these rhymes, one must be

familiar with the traditional Mother Goose rhymes.

The Itsy-Bitsy SpiderThe itsy-bitsy spider

Climbed up the warthog’s snout.The warthog grabbed a hankie

And tried to blow it out.The little bloke was blasted

All the way to Spain,So the itsy-bitsy spiderDid not go there again.

CreditsBrainy Quote. Book Rags Media Network, n.d. Web. 18 July 2011. <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jack_prelutsky.html>.

Englebreit, Mary. Mary Engelbreit's Mother Goose: One Hundred Best-Loved Verses . New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2005. Print.

Pearson, Susan. Grimericks. New York, NY: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2005.

"Poetry." Merriam- Webster Dictionary. 2011 ed. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poetry>. Web. 18 July 2011.

"Poetry." Wikipedia. 2011 ed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry. Web. 18 July 2011.

"Poetry." World Book. 2011. 2011. World Book. Web. 18 July 2011. <http://www.worldbookonline.com/student/search?

searchprop=WBS&st1=poetry&bv=&ht=781,0,8,0,0,18,0,263,6,22,1,0&mt=pc&&>

Prelutsky, Jack. Jack Prelutsky. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 July 2011. <http://www.jackprelutsky.com/>.

Prelutsky, Jack. Something Big Has Been Here. 1st ed. New York, NY: Harper Collons, 1990. Print.

Sidman, Joyce. Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2010. Print.

Sierra, Judy. Monster Goose. 1st ed. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2001. Print.

Titlewave. Follett Library Resources, 2011. Web. 18 July 2011. <http://titlewave.com:80/main/home?SID=48f60b3fe940cb7243ab2179e6ee8b59>.

Yolen, Jane. Snow, Snow. Homesdale, PA: Wordsong, 1998. Print.