Poetry is one of those things that I forgot about as I grew older;
English Literature courses kind of beat my enjoyment of poetic prose out of me.
As a child I loved poetry, it was fun and imaginative. By the time those
English Lit courses rolled around, poetry was painful and just another exercise
in dissecting and extrapolating meaning from someone else's ramblings. I
recently read Don't Bump the Glump and Other Fantasies
by Shel Silverstein, other Silverstein collections had been some of my
favorites as a child, especially Where the Sidewalk ends and
A Light in the Attic, so when I saw
this one I thought I would give it a quick read. Through this book I
rediscovered the magic of fun and nonsensical poetry and begin to think about
it from a teacher's perspective. Silverstein creates a smooth rhythm with
the poems in this collection. He relies heavily on rhyme and magical
nonsensical fantasy creatures which he weaves into a very vivid mental image
that expands the imagination and vocabulary, most of the words he uses are real
words that can be deciphered by context and discussion by students. The
rhythm and rhyme he uses also allows for an almost pneumonic feel, I can easily
envision using fun and imaginative poetry such as his to create an example of
funs ways my students could remember facts about different animals and
plants we would learn about in my science class.
