Friday, August 11, 2006

Poetry Friday

ELETELEPHONY
by Laura Elizabeth Richards

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—

No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—

(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)

Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;

The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—

(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)
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Favorite childhood memory: well, one of them at least, is my mother saying this. It was one of the first poems I memorized. Cool things I learned from Wikipedia: Laura Richards' mother wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic; and Laura herself won the Pulitzer Prize. (Nope, not for this poem, silly! But how cool would that be? It was for a biography of her mother.)
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Poetry Friday Participants:

It's Jane's Choice at Here in the Bonny Glen (and she picked one of my favorite poets)
And I'm beginning to think It's all about me, since Susan Taylor Brown picks another of my favorite poets

A wrung sponge introduces me to someone new (see, again with the me, me, me.)

A Year of Reading makes me laugh
Little Willow fills me with a longing to visit friends (and makes me wish I lived in a thirtysomething world where everyone lives close by)

Farm School has a poem I know (I didn't intend to make all of Poetry Friday about me, but I'm on a roll now)

Jen Robinson reminds me of the type of conversations I'll have with Queen Lucy & SkaterBoy while we're in Disney

Based on her PF post, I want to ask MotherReader what she thinks about the Richards poem

Scholar's Blog has.... what? nothing? Michele, are you OK? You never miss PF!

If I missed you, let me know in the comments, and I'll update tomorrow.

4 comments:

MotherReader said...

Actually I like the Richards poem, because I think it is clever. It's the ones that sound like they were dashed off in four minutes that bug me.

Michele said...

Sorry Liz ! I hadn't got that far this week - having been out all day yesterday celebrating my Mum's birthday and continued recovery from surgery, I hadn't got around to picking anything... Will try to do a Poetry Saturday instead !!

Liz B said...

MotherReader, I think poetry & song lyrics & picture books have suffered from the same myth: that they are easy to write and can be dashed off in 4 minutes and revising? What's that? When the Good Stuff does involve writing and rewriting and thought. One of the reasons I liked the movie Hustle & Flow is that DJay is shown revising lyrics.

Michele, Glad to hear that your mother is doing so well and that you had a good celebration for her birthday & health yesterday!

Becky said...

It's a meme, so of course it's all about mememe, or youyouyou as the case may be, tee hee.

Thanks for the roundup!