Keep a Pocket in your Poem: Celebrating the Poetry of J. Patrick Lewis

I returned home from the 2011 NCTE Annual Convention in Chicago the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I hit the ground running in order to have everything ready for the Thanksgiving feast at my house. I didn’t have time to write up a post about the convention—or our NCTE Poetry Committee’s celebration of J. Patrick Lewis. Pat is the 2011 recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. I am proud to say that I serve on the committee that selected Pat for this honor!

Pat wrote a poem titled Keep a Pocket in Your Poem that NCTE put on a poster in honor of Pat. Here’s the poem:

Keep a Pocket in Your Poem
By J. Patrick Lewis

Keep a pocket in your poem

Filled with any wondrous thing
You can think of—red hawk feather,
Silver penny, pinkie ring,
 

Yo-yo, M&M’s, a ticket

To a rollercoaster ride,
Pictures of your pug. A poem
Needs a pocket on the side.

So—
Keep a pocket in your poem
For imagination grows
From the deepest secret pockets
Every pocket poet knows.

SELECTED POETRY BOOKS WRITTEN BY J. PATRICK LEWIS

A Hippopotamusn’t: And Other Animal Poems. Illustrated by Vicky Chess. Dial, 1988

Earth Verses and Water Rhymes. Illustrated by Robert Sabuda. S&S/Atheneum, 1991

Two-legged, Four-legged, No-legged Rhymes. Illustrated by Pam Paparone. Knopf, 1991

July Is a Mad Mosquito. Illustrated by Melanie Hall. S&S/Atheneum, 1994.

Riddle-Icious. Illustrated by Vicky Chess. Knopf, 1996.

Doodle Dandies: Poems That Take Shape. Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. S&S/Atheneum, 1998.

Riddle-Lightful: Oodles of Little Riddle-Poems. Illustrated by Debby Tilley. Knopf, 1998.

The Little Buggers: Insect and Spider Poems. Illustrated by Vicky Chess. Dial, 1998.

Boshblobberbosh: Runcible Poems for Edward Lear. Illustrated by Gary Kelley. Creative Editions, 1998.

Black Swan, White Crow. Illustrated by Chris Manson. S&S/Atheneum, 1999.

The Bookworm’s Feast: A Potluck of Poems. Illustrated by John O’Brien. Dial, 1999.

Good Mousekeeping: And Other Animal Home Poems. Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. S&S/Atheneum, 2001.

A Burst of Firsts: Doers, Shakers, and Record Breakers. Illustrated by Brian Ajhar. Dial, 2001.

A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme. Illustrated by Alison Jay. Dial, 2002.

Arithme-Tickle: An Even Number of Odd Riddle-Rhymes. Illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz.
Harcourt, 2002.

Swan Song: Poems of Extinction. Illustrated by Christopher Wormell. Creative Editions, 2003.

Freedom Like Sunlight: Praisesongs for Black Americans. Illustrated by John Thompson. Creative Editions, 2003.

Scientrickery: Riddles in Science. Illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz. Harcourt, 2004.

Heroes and She-Roes: Poems of Amazing and Everyday Heroes. Illustrated by Jim Cooke. Dial, 2005.

Monumental Verses. National Geographic, 2005

Please Bury Me In The Library. Illustrated by Kyle M. Stone. Gulliver Books, 2005.

VHERSES: A Celebration of Outstanding Women. Illustrated by Mark Summers. Creative Editions, 2005.

Once Upon A Tomb: Gravely Humorous Verses. Illustrated by Simon Bartram. Candlewick, 2006.

The Brothers’ War: Civil War Voices in Verse. National Geographic, 2007.

The World’s Greatest: Poems. Illustrated by Keith Graves. Chronicle Books, 2008.

Countdown to Summer:  A Poem for Every Day of the School Year. Illustrated by Ethan Long. Little, Brown, 2009.

Spot the Plot!  A Riddle Book of Book Riddles. Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. Chronicle Books, 2009.

The Underwear Salesman: And Other Jobs for Better or Verse. Illustrated by Serge Bloch. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum, 2009.
 
The House. Illustrated by Robert Innocenti. Creative Editions, 2009

Skywriting: Poems to Fly. Illustrated by Laszlo Kubinyi. Creative Editions, 2010.

POETRY BOOKS WRITTEN BY J. PATRICK LEWIS & PAUL B. JANECZKO

Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku. Illustrated by Tricia Tusa. Little, Brown, 2006.

Birds on a Wire: A Renga ‘Round Town. Illustrated by Gary Lippincott. Wordsong, 2008.

POETRY BOOKS WRITTEN BY J. PATRICK LEWIS & REBECCA KAI DOTLICH

Castles: Old Stone Poems. Illustrated by Dan Burr, 2006.

POETRY BOOKS WRITTEN BY J. PATRICK LEWIS & JANE YOLEN

Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers: A Life of Marc Chagall in Verse. Creative Editions, 2011, with original Chagall art.

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NOTE: I had hoped to post more of the pictures that I had taken of our poetry celebration for Pat and his work--as well as pictures of other poets and friends that I spent time with at NCTE in Chicago--but I'm away from home providing "nanny granny" services. I hope to return home this afternoon. (I'm glad I wrote this post before I left home on Wednesday afternoon.)

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The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Carol's Corner this week.

Things to Do If You Are an Eel & A Poetry Announcement

Many, many years ago, I wrote a bunch of animal poems. I don’t think they were particularly good poems—but writing them was definitely a good poetry exercise for me. One of the animal poems that I wrote was about the eel. Here it is:



EEL

Eel is slinky, sleek, and mean.
He’s devious and serpentine.
He hides in caves where water’s deep
And coyly feigns the soundest sleep.
But when an unsuspecting prey
Goes swimming by, the eel will slay
The sorry chap with one sharp jolt
From a self-generated lightning bolt.
It’s such a shocking sight to see
Him cooking prey eel-ectrically.
I’d hate to be the passerby
That eel decides he wants to fry!


I sometimes like to experiment with writing a poem in a variety of ways. A few months ago, I rewrote the eel poems it as a “things to do” poem. Here is the result:


Things to Do If You’re an Eel

Hide in caves where water’s deep
And coyly feign the soundest sleep.
But when an unsuspecting prey
Goes swimming by, slip out and slay
The sorry chap with a high-charged jolt—
Zap him with a lightning bolt!
Be the Top Chef of the sea.
Cook your meals eelectrically.



GREAT POETRY NEWS

The Poetry Foundation recently announced the new US Children’s Poet Laureate—and I couldn’t be happier with their selection: J. Patrick Lewis. Congratulations to Pat! This is an honor which is well-deserved.

BTW, Pat will also receive the 2011 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children at the NCTE Annual Convention later this year.


From the Poetry Foundation
The 2011 Children’s Poet Laureate speaks.
J. PATRICK LEWIS INTERVIEWED BY SYLVIA VARDELL


From School Library Journal
J. Patrick Lewis Named Children's Poet Laureate
By Debra Lau Whelan


From Wild Rose Reader
Wild Rose Reader Interview with J. Patrick Lewis
Click here to read all of my J. Patrick Lewis posts.

Here I am with Pat Lewis and a few of my other favorite children's poets

at the 2009 NCTE Annual Convention in Philadelphia.

From L to R: Janet Wong, Pat, Kris George, Moi, and Rebecca Kai Dotlich

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Jama Rattigan has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week.

Gulls Hold Up the Sky: A Collection of Poetry for Adults Written by J. Patrick Lewis

Today, I’m highlighting a book of poems that was written by J. Patrick Lewis, the 2011 recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Gulls Hold Up the Sky is Pat’s first published collection of poetry for adults. And a fine collection it is indeed!

Gulls Hold Up the Sky is a substantial collection of more than eighty poems that Pat wrote from 1983 to 2010. It contains both serious and light verse…both rhymed and unrhymed poems. Some of the poems made me laugh out loud. Some gave me pause for thought.

I marvel at Pat’s poetic abilities. He is a true wordsmith. He’s an agile acrobat when it comes to clever wordplay. Jane Yolen wrote of this book: “J. Patrick Lewis’s metaphors are both polished and raw, thought out and yet sprung full blown from an imagination as rich and as any ancient storyteller’s.” X. J. Kennedy said: “Gulls Hold Up the Sky is a smashing collection of light verse and arresting poetry. If J. Patrick Lewis’s fame as a poet for the young has distracted notice from the broad sweep of his talent, this overdue gathering for adults should come as an eye-opener.”

I wanted to celebrate the publication of Gulls Hold Up the Sky and call attention to all the wonderful poems that Pat has written for adults during National Poetry Month.

To whet your poetic appetite—here are titles of some of the book’s poems:

Let Me Die a Young Man’s Death

Letter to Galileo
The Battle of Argonne Forest, 1918
The Poetry Meter Maid Works the Night Shift
Misfortune Cookies
Tolstoy’s Hands
Poet Lariats
On the Question of the Cultural Significance of Miniature Mannequins in a Postmodern World
Language Burier
The Death of Poetry.

This collection also includes five Quatrains on Poetics—as well as seven Quatrains on the Writing Life.

I selected two poems from Pat’s collection to post today not just because they are two of my favorite poems in the book--but because the first poem speaks to the heart of poetry and the second to the essence of writing well.

Poetry Is…

the tunnel at the end of the light.

an anagram for “Yo esprit!”
commotion in the left field stanzas.
the great flywheel of metaphor.
prose, bent out of shape.
the idiom of the djinns.
experience’s armor against oblivion.
the midwife at the birth of the alphabet.
verbs hunting for lonely nouns.
an antidote for adjectivitis.
words on a busman’s holiday.
a greased pole to the castle in the air.
the sound of silence … amplified.

©J. Patrick Lewis, all rights reserved

Expanding on Voltaire’s Grammar

“The Adjective is enemy of the Noun,”
Which manages precision on its own.
The English language wears a royal crown
Only when Colonel Verb ascends the throne.
“To be” or not “To be”? The answers clear.
“Is/are/was/were and would have been” are very
Inimical to melody. The ear
That craves Mozart gets too much Salieri.
A French provincial woman made Flaubert
Distraught for weeks: He searched for that bon mot—
A Verb!—personifying her affair.
So if you contemplate striking a blow

For elegance in style, do not disturb
The Adjective. It’s dead. Long live the Verb!

©J. Patrick Lewis, all rights reserved

NOTE: Those of you who enjoyed Pat’s children’s book Spot the Plot: A Riddle Book of Book Riddles will be happy to know that Pat included several “Mini-Book Reviews” of adult novels in Gulls Hold Up the Sky.

Here’s one of them:

Moby Dick

Man’s obsessed,

Whale is gored—
Man goes a little
Overboard.

If you enjoyed Moby Dick, you’re sure to chuckle when you read The Scarlet Letter, Crime and Punishment, The Great Gatsby, and Pat's other mini-book reviews.

Read more poems from Gulls Hold Up the Sky:

Gulls Hold Up the Sky

How the Book of Baseball Was Written

Let me Die a Young Man’s Death

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A Short Q&A with J.Patrick Lewis

Elaine: What inspired you to write your first mini-book review?

Pat: The mini-review of Moby Dick may have been the first, but that encouraged me to tackle other classics. I love parody in all its forms, so perhaps that was the inspiration. I was trying to out-Cliff Cliff Notes!

Elaine: When did you begin writing your mini-book reviews in verse?

Pat: I can't say when I wrote the mini-book reviews but it's been some years ago. They were all first published in Light Quarterly, the only journal devoted exclusively to light verse in the U.S.

Elaine: Did you write adult poetry before you began writing poetry for children?

Pat: Yes, I published about 80 adult poems in literary journals and small magazines before I even thought of writing for children. The hope was that I could get a collection of adult poems published, but that is more difficult by far than getting a book of children's verse published.

Elaine: Who are your favorite writers of light verse?

Pat: Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, X.J. Kennedy, Edmund Conti, R.S. Gwynn, Gavin Ewart, John Whitworth, Arthur Guiterman, to name a few.

Elaine: Who are your favorite writers of serious poetry?

Pat: All the usual suspects: Frost, Hardy, Dickinson, Yeats, Auden, Larkin, Wilbur, Roethke, mostly formalists. Charles Causley, A.E. Housman, E.A. Robinson, James Fenton, Kit Wright, too many to name.

More about J. Patrick Lewis

My 2008 Wild Rose Reader Interview with J. Patrick Lewis

You can read the rest of my J. Patrick Lewis posts here.

From The Miss Rumphius Effect: Poetry Makers—J. Patrick Lewis

From Seven Impossible Things: Interview with J. Patrick Lewis

From GottaBook: J. Patrick Lewis—The Poet of the World

The Wild Rose Reader Poetry Prize for the third week of National Poetry Month will be The Underwaer Salesman and Other Jobs for Better or Verse—which was written by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Serge Bloch!

I’ll announce the winner of Twosomes: Love Poems from the Animal Kingdom later today.

At Political Verses, I have a song parody about the Fed bailout for the wealthy titled Guess Where Our Money Goes?

At Blue Rose Girls, I have an original memoir poem titled Crocheting.

Diane has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Random Noodling.