A Joker and a Jack

Uncle Shelby's Zoo: Don't Bump the Glump! and Other Fantasies
by Shel Silverstein
originally published by HMH Publications Inc. (Playboy) 1963
HarperCollins 2008









My Dog May Be a Genius
by Jack Prelutsky
HarperCollins / Greenwillow 2008













In these waning days of his tenure as Children's Poet Laureate, Jack Prelutsky and his publishers (who also happen to be Silverstien's publisher) give us another of his larger poetry omnibuses. For as much as I like to pick away at Prelutsky I have to give the man credit for his consistency and his ability to deliver the exact tone of poem that children like to read over and over.

There's hardly any subject new under the sun when it comes to topics for poetry but "A Letter From Camp" sounds a bit too close to Allen Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" for my comfort. And then there's "The Underwater Marching Band" which had a cadence that, I swear, made me start humming along with Sandra Boynton's (of all people) "The Uninvited Loud Precision Band."

Rife with puns and wordplay, fart jokes and concrete poems, Prelutsky provides an ample smorgasbord for young palates.

I Thought I Saw

I thought I saw BBBBBBBBBBB
dive down into the CCCCCCC.
Could I believe my own II?
I'm not so sure, I'm not YY.

That would be eleven bees, seven seas, two eyes, too wise. As we say around the house; pretty clever, toilet lever.

Then he's got stuff that comes off like a cross between Hilaire Belloc Greek wrestling with Ogden Nash in front of the hearth, with a tip o' the hat to William Stieg's CDB:

A Bear is Not Disposed

A bear is not disposed
to dressing up in clothes,
not even underwear,
A bear likes being bare.

Indeed. Emphasize any one word in that last line like an actor's exercise for a variety of meanings.

* * *

Shel Silverstein was his own dog, so to speak. His early years were spent drawing cartoons of army life, as well as writing and drawing his observations for Playboy magazine. He also wrote lyrics to something like 800 songs that were recorded by people as diverse as Johnny Cash ("A Boy Named Sue"), The Irish Rovers ("The Unicorn"), and Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show ("The Cover of the Rolling Stone").

I point this out because I want to show off how much I know about Uncle Shelby. No! Wait! I point this out because there's something about the spirit of Shel Silverstien that comes though most of his work, that sense of the absurd married to the real. I say most of his work because occasionally that spirit is missing, for whatever reason, and in the case of the reissue of Don't Bump the Glump! I feel the spirit has left the building.

Of course, the spirit did leave the building in 1999 when Silverstein died, and I half-suspect this book wouldn't have been reissued if he were still with us. Maybe I'm wrong, because his Evil Eye enterprise renewed the copyright. It isn't that it's bad, but it feels early, like a man working out his style, and doing so on Playboy's payroll.

Most of what we have are short little poems about imaginary beasties, each with its own little watercolor illustration to go with. One that hit me like a ton of bricks is the following. I could have sworn I've actually heard a recoding of Uncle Shelby playing his guitar and singing to this. Is this a buried childhood memory, or something my synapses concocted on their own.

Slithergadee

The Slithergadee has crawled out of the sea.
He may catch the others, but he won't catch me.
No you won't catch me, old Slitherdagee
You mat catch the others, but you wo---

From the man who wrote the song "I Got Stoned and I Missed It" and was posthumously admitted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. Thanks, Shel

* * *

Check out the Poetry Friday round-up this week over at A Wrung Sponge.

Oops!

Poems by Alan Katz
Drawings by Edward Koren
Margaret K. McElderry / Simon & Schuster 2008

Okay, once again just to make sure we're all on the same page: do not give your book a title that can be used against you in a review. You would think editors would be the first to understand the rules of making a book review-proof. Of course, it's also a good idea to make sure the content followed the same rules, not just the title.

Katz is no Shel Silverstein (he's not even Jack Prelutsky), but so much about this book feels like that's what the guilty parties were trying for. It's 179 pages of short, silly poetry accompanied by line drawings is squarely aimed at those who have worn out their copies of Where the Sidewalk Ends and It's Raining Pigs and Noodles.

All the usual topics are covered -- too much TV, failing grades, turns of phrases, wordplay -- but so much of it falls flat. Rhymes and near-rhymes have the feel of having being culled from a reference book with the rest of the poem built awkwardly around them. There are ways to break the meter within a poem, and then there are just broken feet. And some of these poems seemed designed to deliver a punchline but don't have the substance to prop them up. I think there's a picture-book's-worth of poems here that are good -- maybe a couple dozen or so -- and the rest reads like contractual filler.

I know kids in their poetry phase can't ever get enough of the humorous verse, and this will easily break up the monotony of rereading the same six or seven books for this crowd, but I don't suspect it will get the same level of repeat readings.

Question: where are the women poets who write volumes of humorous poetry? Is nonsense considered the province of male poets, and is this why boys stop reading poetry?

3 by Alarcon (and a few thoughts on Prelutsky)

From the Bellybutton of the Moon / Del Ombligo de la Luna
1998

Angels Ride Bikes / Los Angeles Andan en Bicicleta
1999

Iguanas in the Snow / Iguanas en la nieve
2001

by Francisco X. Alarcon
illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez
Children's Press Books

I wanted to discover a new voice, some new poetry. I wanted it to be my discovery. Not necessarily something new, not something I could trumpet to the world as the next big thing, but something out there that hadn't crossed my path. There's a lot out there.

I went looking for a new voice in children's poetry and initially I went to the Poetry Foundation website because they had anointed the first Children's Poet Laureate last fall. Given my goal that might sound like cheating but what I wanted was to know what was already out there. I didn't want to "find" what someone else was pushing. Turns out I needn't have worried, there wasn't really anything there.

I jumped around on the Internet and landed on a California poet named Francesco X. Alarcon. In simple two- and three-line stanzas he was writing about the small moments of barrio life, of growing up in California, of the migrant and Mexican American experience. I couldn't find anything in bookstores and was able to track down three of his four seasonal collections.

Los Libros / Books

pasaportes / oversized
de talla mayor / passports

que nos permiten / that let us
viajar / travel

a dondequiera / anywhere
cuandoquiera / anytime

y no dejar / and keep on
de sonar / dreaming

In Alarcon's poems a family dressed in army surplus cold weather parkas become the iguanas playing in the rarely-seen snow. There is an ode to the man who twirls his mustache and sells popsicles from a cart at the end of the alley on a summer day. In his poems the imported palm trees of Southern California cha-cha-cha during earthquakes. The colorful illustrations that accompany the poems are in the bold colors and flattened surfaces reminiscent of the Mexican mural movement. The poems and their presentation are perfect for emerging readers who are ready for poetry beyond the rhymes, beyond nonsense, who might be looking for their own poetic inspiration.

Para escribir poesia / To Write Poetry

debemos / We must
primero tocar / first touch
oler y soborear / smell and taste
cada palabra / every word

That pretty much is the complete lesson plan for a poetry unit. Not that you'd find an administration that would accept it as one. I didn't expect to uncover a great new voice but I was happy to have been so successful in a single casual outing.

* * * * *

April, as may remember, was National Poetry Month. While many in the kidlit blogosphere were doing many wonderful things with the month I just wasn't feeling it this time around.

I did, however, hold a secret hope that we would be seeing some more high-profile books and event surrounding National Poetry Month. The source of my hope was the naming of Jack Prelutsky as the Children's Poet Laureate back in the fall by the Poetry Foundation. At the time I imagined that Prelutsky would seize the opportunity to give children's poetry a higher profile, something along the lines of what Robert Pinsky did when he raised the national level of discussion about poetry with his Poet Laureate status. I'm not saying Prelutsky would have to hold a regular gig on NPR, or hold down the fort at Slate.com, or create the Favorite Poem Project, but then again, why couldn't he?

I guess I was hoping that when National Poetry Month rolled around we'd be hearing more from old Jack. Perhaps I just always happened to be out of earshot, perhaps he was out there discovering and promoting new children's poets, making a case for better rhymes or even for an examination of serious poetry for children. I'm not talking about having to track the man down on the Poetry Foundation website for a couple of puff entries but something a little more in our faces.

Oh, wait, he had two of his own book released during National Poetry Month, Good Sports and Me I Am, and it looks like his various publishers went back and dusted off all his older titles. And just this week another new Prelutsky book hit the shelves, In Aunt Giraffe's Green Garden, only this one came out with a Hollywood style name-above-the-title cover that proudly proclaimed "Jack Prelutsky, Children's Poet Laureate".

Huh.

Don't get me wrong, Jack Prelutsky is a fine children's poet and has dozens of very popular books to prove it. The recognition isn't undeserved, though it is unnecessary. I guess I assumed that the title and the position was meant to be something more than a marketing tag and a lifetime achievement laurel.

One needs to be enchanted before being disenchanted, so I guess I'll have to settle for disappointed.