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Children’s Poetry, Part 4 Favorite Poems and the Fun of Sound in Verse
Hello Seized Readers!
Summer may be the sound-richest season of the year. Step into your backyard on any given evening and expect to hear crickets chafing their legs and croaking frogs. Our man-made sounds of sprinklers ch-ch-ing and rumbling mower engines add to the symphony or cacophony—you decide!—as this interwoven tapestry can present itself as either option to our human ears.
This summer marks the arrival of two broods of cicadas loudly droning from our woods, a historical event which has not happened since the time of Thomas Jefferson. In this recent podcast, “Cicada Time,” of Today, Explained, Benji Jones talks to host Rebeca Ibarra about the wonder of this event. Jones explains that this “dual emergence of cicadas erupt from the soil, climb up trees and grass, and start singing.” While we may not find the sizzling pulse of these insects to be pleasant, this noise is a sensory marker of summer. Note that this podcast can be found via Apple or Spotify.
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Children’s verse is particularly strong in its use of sound and accompanying rhythm, aspects that pull us into the world of the poem and make us smile or frown, depending on the subject and sounds the poet includes. The use of onomatopoeia makes the sounds come alive in our imagination.
Sounds and rhythms within verse are the very thing which inspired children’s poet Eve Merriam to choose writing verse as a critical part of her writing career. The Poetry Foundation biography of Eve Merriam states, “From her earliest years, the rhythmic, rhyming nature of poetry impassioned her so much that being a poet was something of a necessity for her.” Merriam told Language Arts interviewer Glenna Sloan, "I find it difficult to sit still when I hear poetry or read it out loud. I feel a tingling feeling all over, particularly in the tips of my fingers and in my toes, and it just seems to go right from my mouth all the way through my body. It's like a shot of adrenalin or oxygen when I hear rhymes and word play."
Clearly, Merriam who responded so joyfully to the sounds of verse, was destined to become a poet!
Enjoy the onomatopoeia, rhythms and rhymes of her poem, “Weather,” just below.
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Weather Dot a dot dot dot a dot dot/ Spotting the windowpane./ Spack a spack speck flick a flack fleck/ Freckling the windowpane./ A spatter a scatter a wet cat a clatter/ A splatter a rumble outside./ Umbrella umbrella umbrella umbrella/ Bumbershoot barrel of rain./ Slosh a galosh slosh a galosh/ Slither and slather a glide/ A puddle a jump a puddle a jump/ A puddle a jump puddle splosh/ A juddle a pump a luddle a dump/ A pudmuddle jump in and slide!/ -Eve Merriam. From Catch a Little Rhyme, published by Macmillan, 1966.
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Hearing the Rain in “Weather”
If we’ve forgotten what it was like to be a child watching rain and splashing in puddles, Eve Merriam reminds us with her vivid poem. We shouldn’t discount this piece of verse because it’s a children’s poem, and Merriam knows how to have fun writing it. That’s exactly why we should pay attention to her poem. There are a wealth of musical devices here.
“Weather” serves as a great example of how to capture sound and music in the poems we may wish to write.
Rain is a repetitive sound, and Merriam masterfully captures its essence. Notice how she plays with repeating images, the dotting of drops landing on the window and the four umbrellas which show up in her fourth stanza. The fifth stanza leads us to galoshes, clever of her, with her slosh a galosh and the fun of jumping in puddles, a puddle a jump. This poem is brilliantly from the perspective of a young child’s eyes and ears!
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Onomatopoeia and rhyme have their day too. The acoustic quality of spack, flack, and splosh, especially, cause us to hear the rain as we read her poem. The incidences of rhyme also help us hear the rain and give “Weather” a music which delights our ears.
Notice the happy patter and rhyme in her second stanza, “Spack a spack speck flick a flack fleck” and in the next one, “A spatter a scatter a wet cat a clatter.” The second half of her poem is rich with singing rhymes and a couple of funny, made-up words: galosh and splosh; glide and slide; jump, pump and dump; puddle, luddle, and puddmuddle, ha ha!
As to the repetition of consonants and vowels, a.k.a. alliteration, consonance, and assonance, here are a few standouts: spotting, spack, and speck; flick, flack, fleck, and freckling; spatter, scatter, and splatter; bumbershoot (isn’t this a great word? Did you know that bumbershoot is another word for umbrella?) and barrel; slosh, slither, slather; puddle, juddle, luddle and puddmuddle.
“Weather” is an auditory delight, no matter the age of the reader.
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What poem especially delights you and why? Share in the Comments section!
Today’s Book Pick
Photo by Diana Ewell Engel
Talking Like The Rain: A Read-to-me Book of Poems selected by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy and illustrated by Jane Dyer. Little, Brown and Company, 1992.
I have abundant praise for this beautiful book of poetry which features poems by famous, recognizable poets such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Joyful poems by more contemporary poets like Karla Kuskin and Dennis Lee as well as Eve Merriam can be found here too! Poems like “I Woke Up This Morning” by Karla Kuskin and “My TV Came Down With A Chill” by William R. Espy will make you and/or the children in your life gleeful with laughter.
Photo by Diana Ewell Engel of page 33 from Talking Like The Rain which features an Anonymous poem, “Away Down East, Away Down West” and a watercolor by Jane Dyer.
What’s Coming
Photo by Anne Myles
Poetry Reading and Open Mic at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, NC on Sunday, 7/21 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. If you live in or near Greensboro, I hope you will join us!
Come one, Come all! Cool off on a hot July afternoon—Sunday, 7/21—at inimitable Scuppernong Books located at 304 South Elm Street in Greensboro as you listen to accomplished Triad poets Claire Millikin, Jim Zola, and Claudine Moreau read from their collections. Grab a glass of wine or another beverage from Scupp's restaurant and find a seat. An Open Mic will follow: Bring a poem of your own to share, should you so desire. Claire, Jim, and Claudine will be on hand to chat with you and sign the books you may decide to purchase. Join us! Learn about these poets from their bios:
CLAIRE MILLIKIN is the author of several books of poetry, including Television (Unicorn Press 2016) and Dolls (2Leaf Press 2021) and most recently Magicicada (Unicorn Press 2024). Her poetry has received the WB Yeats' Prize, the Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, and the Charles Simic Prize, editor's choice. Claire Millikin teaches art history and American Studies for the University of Maine system, and lives in rural coastal Maine.
JIM ZOLA is a poet and photographer living in Greensboro, North Carolina. He grew up in Niskayuna, New York. He has worked as a librarian at the North Carolina School for the Deaf and a children’s librarian at a public library. He is the author of It's the Unremarkable That Will Last (Redhawk Publications, 2024). Previous books published include What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press 2014), Monday After the End of the World (Kelsay Books 2020), and Erasing Cabeza de Vaca (Main Street Rag 2020).
CLAUDINE R. MOREAU was born near Michigan’s Saginaw Bay, but was raised in the bituminous coal mining country of southwestern Pennsylvania. She is the author of the chapbook Dark Machines (Fugitive Poets Press 2012). Demise of Pangaea (Main Street Rag 2024) is her first full length book of poems. Now residing in North Carolina, Moreau teaches physics and astronomy at Elon University and also serves as a faculty director of a first year student neighborhood.
Don’t forget to respond to this post in the Comments section. Share your thoughts and/or tell us about a poem you find delightful.
Jake, that's beautiful. Thanks for sharing that special memory with me. ❤️
Di, I like the Eve Merriam poem. I've always enjoyed the rain. When I visited my grandparents' Texas ranch years ago, I would sit on their front porch during occasional summer storms. I liked the impact of the cool air, the sound of the thunder, and watching the birds take shelter nearby.