Poetry This Week

What sort of poetry have I been reading this week? I looked at quite a few over this week, I can't say I can specifically remember all of them, but I'll try to recall a few that I added to my notebook. The first, obvious ones, are the one in the packet. I actually really liked these, although my least favorite is probably Flash Cards. I guess I thought it was sort of strange, and it sounded like she was almost being forced to be good at math. I also thought that the first line made it sound as if she were bragging about herself: "...I was the whiz kid...", although it didn't necessarily follow through with the rest of the poem. I did find an interesting recording of the author reading it, which made me like it a little better, but I wasn't really sure how they author meant for me to feel at the end. It doesn't sound like a happy poem, but it doesn't seem very sad when she reads it, either. But I also don't want to emphasize the bad things (I can be fairly critical) because I did like it, particularly when listening to her read it.

      While looking for a poem to carry in my pocket (I remembered), I found the poem A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes which is actually a children's book, but it made me smile. It's very short and compares everything to a pocket, like a vase, and a bowl, and a chicken coop. I almost brought it with me on Thursday, but instead I brought Spellbound by Emily Brontë, which I really like, and I wrote out The Purple Cow for my friend who is, strangely enough, very fond of both cows and the color purple. I did tell a few people about Poem-in-Your-Pocket day on Wednesday while we were sitting on a hill, waiting for a bus which evidently forgot to take us to our soccer game, but they all forgot. I also read a poem this week called The Tree, which I also liked. He starts by saying "I am four monkeys," and then tells what each monkey is doing, and then ends with "How many monkeys are you?" I thought that was an interesting way to talk about yourself, each monkey shows a different part of his personality. The last one that I like is a few poems from a book, I Am! Say the Lamb. It has all these short poems about different objects/animals. (The Donkey, The Ceiling, The Chair, The Hippo, The Lizard) The poet is the same one that wrote My Papa's Waltz, Theodore Roethke.

About the Bloath
By Shel Silverstein

In the undergrowth

There dwells the Bloath

Who feeds upon poets and tea.

Luckily I know this about him,

While he knows almost nothing of me.