What Adrienne Thinks About That

Bleh is very different than your bold statement "this isn't poetry." Would you say that Joyce Sidman's riddle poems in Butterfly Eyes are not poetry because they are riddles? Do they qualify to you because she uses different, well-known poetic forms (a pantoum, for example) or simply because she uses forms other than the seemingly easy rhymed couplet?

The above poem certainly shows "an imaginative awareness of experience" (an oft used phrase when asking what poetry is), since I would say the description of the magnetic dance isn't how most folks would view it. Is that how you'd describe a magnet based on your experiences with them?

So why, despite your finding a lack of the poems going beyond basic facts (which, I'd note, is simply your reading of them, since the example you post includes internal simile and your noted external metaphor, as well as using rhythm and rhyme and an imaginative anthropomorphization, and... and... and...), do you claim it isn't poetry?

Before I forget, the "BLEH!" line is totally facetious. I hope people aren't taking caps combined with exclamation points (two no less!) seriously.

These are such interesting questions, Gregory. I read Butterfly Eyes when it first came into the library, but I haven't read it since and can't recall it with precision, so I'll have to take a bye on commenting on it just now. I can talk a little more about Scien-Trickery and the nature of poetry, though.

I think a lot about what poetry is, but I don’t have a handy definition for it. I think the definition of poetry is a lot like the definition of a classic – highly personal. When I use the word “poetry,” I’m usually thinking of something along the lines of William Stafford’s “poetry is language with a little luck in it.” I think I’d have to say I agree with a lot of what Stafford has to say about poetry and writing. Poetry can use rhythm and rhyme and figurative language, but those things don’t make my definition of poetry. They do for other people, and I’m all good with that. But, for me, it seems like those devices can be used in prose, lyrics, even everyday speech. What makes poetry for me is where the language is working on a literal level but it’s also working on a deeper level. When I say “deep,” I think I mean “Deep.”

To get down to Scien-Trickery, I picked “Push Me, Pull Me” as an example because I think it’s the best in the collection. It’s got a metaphor, sure, but it’s a fun metaphor, not one that when examined more closely reveals a discussion of the great issues of human existence – more what I’m thinking of when I think of poetry. As an example, I’ll cite one of my favorite poems, “In Pete’s Shoes” by John Ciardi. On one level, it’s just a dad talking about his son in rhyming couplets. The poem rocks a couple puns and has the kind of humor that makes you smile. On another level, the poem hits the reader in the gut. It’s about the ways in which we can’t understand each other, even the people we love the most. It suggests that maybe we don’t even want to. You can read that poem as a funny story about a child, you can enjoy the language, and/or you can consider the things it’s trying to say about life. In my favorite dictionary, The American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, definition #6 of poetry is, “A quality that suggests poetry, as in grace, beauty, or harmony.” I like that.

This is all to take nothing away from J. Patrick Lewis. I can only assume he consented to his collection being subtitled “Riddles in Science” and having answers printed upside down at the bottom of each poem because he meant these things he created to be riddles. He very successfully employs literary devices to make these riddles more fun to read, and bravo to him. If I have a complaint, it isn’t with Mr. Lewis: it’s with the Library of Congress and the Dewey Decimal System. While I have the highest respect for both institutions, I also have my disagreements from time to time. This is one. It’s a shame not to have this book sitting alongside the rest of the riddles (although I could also see an argument for moving it into the 500s with the science books), but this is the sort of thing catalogers would probably shoot me over. Of course, we librarians are all in the business of trying to get the books in the best spot on the shelves so that they wind up in the hands of people who need them or will appreciate them. We are also absolutely militant in our differences of opinion over the best way to accomplish that, though. I, for one, am putting Scien-Trickery with the riddles. If it shows up on a dusty book report someday, we'll know it was a bad decision. I'll probably forget to post back by then, though....

Well, even though I'm but a Dewey novice, I also understand the disagreement issues. There definitely seems some art mixed in with the science of classification.

As for poetry, I have a less stringent threshhold, I guess. Well done dogerrel is as much poem to me as a loverly Ode. As you note, the definition of poetry is a moving target, as it's largely based on a series of judgment calls. I agree that something in rhyming couplets isn't by default a poem. But "a quality that suggests poetry" defines prose, poetry, music, whatever.

My bugaboo is that folks who practice humor always tend to have their achievements dismissed or lessened. And funny poetry gets, I think, less respect than even funny novels. Still, when you learn that after Shel Silverstein, the best selling poetry books for kids include many of the "Kids Pick the Funniest Poems" books (edited (and sometimes contributed to) by Bruce Lansky), I worry that the ease with which folks can say "not poetry" about many works in those books will teach kids that what they like about poetry isn't worth liking. It's back to the whole "poetry must be good for you" argument that turns most off the stuff to begin with.

Making someone laugh is creating an emotional response as much as making someone cry. Often, a funny poem makes folks think, too, as did the Patrick Lewis poem. So instead of saying "not poetry" I'd argue you should embrace it and use it as a gateway drug, so to speak. Go from this to Science Verse to any of the great epic poems about the nature of matter. OK, might be hard to find those, but calling something "not poetry" doesn't seem the most poetic use of the written word!

I agree with you 125% about humor and what turns kids off poetry. One argument for getting this book out of the poetry section and in with the riddles (or science books) is that it's a sneaky way of introducing something a little more linguistically interesting into kids’ literary diets.

I’ve read Science Verse several times now, and it has felt more like poetry to me than this did. I’ll have to look at it again to say why, although it could have something to do with my rabid fanaticism when it comes to Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. My favorite, favorite thing in the world is when someone tells me the truth and makes me laugh at the same time. Silverstein and Prelutsky are obvious in this category, but I can think of poems that are both funny and true (“True”?) in work by Kuskin and Ciardi. And then there’s Janeczko and Lewis’s Wing Nuts – lots of funny and true moments there, too.

And, really, I wouldn’t argue with someone else’s definition of poetry. To me, it feels a little like telling someone that their religion is invalid. I’m happy to talk about my definition, though. And I should note that there are plenty of books in the poetry section of the Children’s Room at WPL that don’t feel like poetry to me, but they fit someone else’s definition of poetry and don’t seem to belong in another Dewey number – so on the poetry shelves they remain. My general inclination is to put poetry about a particular subject in the subject call number area. There have been a couple biographies in verse, for example, that I’ve chosen to put with the biographies instead of the poetry. We do the same thing with graphic novels. If you completely segregate a format, it feels “other” in a way it maybe doesn’t need to, and I enjoy trying to figure out creative ways to cross-market the collection, genres, formats, etc…. I want to expose kids to a really wide range of literature and formats so hopefully they’ll find the things that really interest them and remain more open to a wide variety of ideas and formats as they get older. Of course, many of my colleagues wouldn’t approve of a lot of my classification practices, and I’m always learning.

It kind of baffles me that someone would classify this as a riddle, yet the incomprehensible shit Wallace Stevens writes is somehow poetry BECAUSE no one knows what he's saying. I understood the literal and anthropomorphic meanings of this (non) poem the first time I read it. Is that what makes it not poetry?

No, like I say, it's a judgment call on my part. Also, the thing to stress is that the book doesn't call itself poetry. The book calls itself riddles. It's the Library of Congress that decided to call it poetry. It seems like if a book says it's riddles, we should go with it....

It has to be difficult to classify a lot of things. And nearly everyone has some opinion of where something should be classified. I was really impressed with myself to find out that David Sedaris is "Literature" according to Borders. I read Literature.

I'm ever so sorry that no one was immature enough to note (explicitly, my dear Adrienne) that, in other contexts, we have here a poem about a couple who couldn't get it together until they tried 69in' it...

Was this published in the late sixties/early seventies perchance?

2004. I assume the editor is either very literal or very liberal.

The 7th grader in me is really pissed that I didn't point out the 69 reference first.