Concrete Poem in its simplest form, a poem in which the words are arranged to look like the subject of the poem. For instance, if the poem were about circles or walking in a circle, the words would be lined up to form a circle. Sometimes the type size and the typeface are manipulated to create an image that reflects the meaning of a word or the whole poem.
Exaggerate to make something bigger, better, stranger, worse, funnier than it actually is. It’s a very useful technique in writing humorous poetry.
Haiku a poetic form that originated in Japan. The poem is usually unrhymed and consists of seventeen syllables set in three lines. The first line contains five syllables; the second, seven syllables; and the last, five syllables. Traditionally the subject is the natural world, but many poets writing in English have found that it’s a useful way of expressing insights about ordinary life.
Irony saying something that’s the opposite of the way it’s supposed to be. I use a lot of irony in my poem “Rat for Lunch” when I talk about how much I enjoy eating rat. Since we all know a rat would be a horrible thing to eat, it becomes funny and silly to declare instead that it’s a wonderful dish.
Meter the combination of rhythms in a line of a poem. There are many forms of meters and lots of fancy ways of writing them, and even fancier ways of varying the meter to make a point or stress a particular sound or notion. This topic can get very complicated very fast. If you’re a beginning poet, I suggest you use the simplest meters that you can.
In the following examples of just a few meters, I indicate unstressed syllables with a lowercase dee, and stressed syllables with an uppercase
DUM. Then I show you a sample of each of those meters with a line from one of my own poems.
dee-DUM-dee-DUM-dee-DUM-dee-DUM My pig put on a bathing suit
DUM-dee-DUM-dee-DUM-dee-DUM Every day, at ten past noon,
dee-DUM-dee-DUM-dee-DUM-dee Oh, Teddy Bear, dear Teddy,
dee-DUM-dee-dee-DUM-dee-dee-DUM-deedee-DUM
I wonder why Dad is so thoroughly mad,
Poetic License a kind of freedom that lets writers (not only poets) change names, settings, dates, or anything else to make a particular point or create a certain feeling. Poetic license is my favorite license, and I use it all the time.
Point of View refers to who’s doing the talking in the poem. In “Ballad of a Boneless Chicken,” it’s the boneless chicken who’s singing the ballad. However, I could have written the poem from many other points of view, such as my own point of view (the poet as unnamed narrator), the farmer’s point of view, a normal chicken’s point of view, or another barnyard animal’s point of view.
Pun a joke that arises from the way a single word can mean different things in different situations, or from playing on how words that sound the same can have different meanings. An example of the first kind is the word seal, which can mean a substance that sticks two things together, or the cigar-shaped mammal that lives in the ocean. I used this pun in my poem “Please Remove Seal” in A Pizza the Size of the Sun. An example of the second kind would be the words toed, meaning “having toes”; towed, meaning “pulled”; and toad, a common amphibian that resembles a frog. I used the word towed instead of the word toed to create a pun in my poem “News Brief,” also in A Pizza the Size of the Sun. Here are both poems:
PLEASE REMOVE SEAL
PLEASE REMOVE SEAL BEFORE USING THIS PRODUCT,
the sign on the box clearly read.
I don’t have a seal, but I’m taking no chances—
I’ll toss out my walrus instead.
NEWS BRIEF
A defiant flock of pigeons
caused a minor episode
by obstructing local traffic
on a secondary road.
When the sheriff tried to move them,
they irreverently crowed,
so he radioed a tow truck
and had every pigeon towed.
A third kind of pun is one in which you substitute a completely unrelated word—having not the same sound but a similar sound—for the word you would expect to find. This is probably my favorite kind of pun. I think it’s the most fun to invent and is possibly the sort I use most often. In my poem “The Bunny Bus,” in It’s Raining Pigs & Noodles, I substitute the word rabbit for rapid, and in my poem “A Skunk Sat in a Courtroom,” in My Dog May Be a Genius, I substitute the word odor for order. In both cases, it is the pun that delivers the punch line and makes the poem funny. You can find many more examples of this kind of pun in my books.
THE BUNNY BUS
All aboard the Bunny Bus,
pay your fares, and do not fuss.
You will find your ride ideal,
there’s a hare behind the wheel.
Passengers, please keep your seats
as we speed along the streets.
When you’re going anywhere
Rabbit Transit gets you there.
A SKUNK SAT IN A COURTROOM
A skunk sat in a courtroom.
A judge was on the bench.
He held his nose and shouted,
“What is that dreadful stench?”
“It’s only me, Your Honor,”
the skunk said in retort.
“I thought I heard you calling
for odor in the court.”
Rhyme words or the endings of words that sound alike. Look and took rhyme, mother and brother rhyme, and llamas and pajamas also rhyme. Just because two words look as if they rhyme doesn’t mean that they do. For example, moth does not rhyme with both.
You’ve been using rhymes all your life. Remember the nursery rhymes you used to repeat? Or how about the jump-rope rhymes and games you shouted on the playground? Rhyming gives a poem grace and charm and is an ideal way to make puns, but it’s not easy to do. I always recommend that young poets shouldn’t tackle rhyming until they understand some other basic aspects of a poem, such as rhythm and meter and using ideas creatively and succinctly.
Rhyming Dictionary a reference book that lists more rhymes than you could possibly think of. I find it invaluable. You should be able to find one in your school or public library.
Rhythm the repeated beat of a poem created by the emphasis given to the syllables. In the English language the simplest rhythm is the one that goes “dee-DUM.” The first syllable sounds soft, and the second sounds hard. This may be the first rhythm we ever experienced in our lives—it’s the way our heartbeat sounds. Another easy rhythm is the reverse: “DUM-dee.”
Scansion a fancy word for figuring out the rhythm and meter of a line of poetry.
Thesaurus a special kind of dictionary that groups words with the same meaning. Suppose you’re looking for another word for big. In the thesaurus you’ll find that similar words are large, great, huge, enormous, and so on. This is a very useful book for writers. I always have one on my desk. You should be able to find one in your school or public library.
Voice in poetry, the narrator of the poem. In “point of view,” I said that the chicken ballad is sung by the boneless chicken but that there could have been a number of other narrators—for example, the farmer, normal chickens, or another animal on the farm. On a broader scale, voice can also refer to the unique style found in a particular writer’s work. In this case, voice is something writers want to achieve, and often it requires a lot of writing to find it.