Enough of this heavy introspection. Time to be silly.
I'm helping teach a class on poetry and I'm supposed to teach about backwards poems this week. I wrote one poem in the tradition of "Old Dan Tucker" and another in the tradition of Shel Silverstein's Runny Babbit. Let me know which one you like better... or which one a 4th grader would like better.
When I was Old so Long Ago
When I was old so long ago,
I brushed my teeth with my big toe.
I washed my face with mud and grime
I woke right up when they said, “Bedtime!”
But now I’m young and I know much less
Don’t use my toe, I must confess.
It’s much too hard to use my toe,
So now I brush with my left elbow.
Giddlywinks and Ogres
Once upon a tackward bime in an ancient lairy fand
There lived a giendly friant and his berry ogre mand.
No angry raids or ugly wars for these frood giends, they say.
For games were more their tup of cea, and every eve they’d play.
They partied every afternoon until the neak of bright
But every tame of giddlywinks would end up in a fight.
“No Fair!” ”Stop that!” “You’re pushing me!” the priant would goclaim.
The ogres would just push bight rack and go on with the game.
“If you don’t settle down right now,” the giant said one night,
“I’ll kick you out and call the game and send you fome to hight.”
“It’s all in fun,” the ogres cried. “It’s all just for a lark.
So please don’t send us home at night. You see, we dear the fark!”
9 comments:
I like the first one because it was all wrong. And I like the second one because it was like Runny Babbit.
Bethany
I like the second one better. The first one doesn't make sense.
I think I like the second one better though I had to read the "neak of bright" six times before it worked as you intended. With a tweek here and there I would go with #2
Not only does my tang get toungled up, but so does my mind. I like the structure of #1. Give me a dozen more verses. Papa John
Both are pretty creative...I'm with your dad -- my mind doesn't work as well as it used to (we call this "pregnancy brain"), so the first one might be my favorite. It reminds me of a song we used to sing in elementary -- Old Tante Koba. Do you know it? "Old Tante Koba, she doesn't know, she stirs her coffee with her own big toe. Old Tante Koba, she is so dumb, she thinks it is better than to use her thumb! Tisn't my affair, tisn't your affair, it's Tante Koba's trouble, so we needn't care..."
I don't know that one, Sandi. Thanks for the heads up. I'll look for it.
These will make good bedtime reading tonight. Thanks!
I thought I'd answer your question about Bloglines here--Yes, you have to register each blog that you want to check--most all blogs put out what is called an RSS feed, and this is what it uses. Bloglines has some tools that can detect RSS feeds, but for most "Blogger" blogs, the feed is the URL + /atom.xml. So my feed is http://abparker.blogspot.com/atom.xml
The Bloglines page is divided into two frames. One lists your subscriptions and shows how many unread posts there are. If you click on it, then the unread posts appear in the right pane. Sometimes pictures don't download, and you have to go to the site itself if you want to make comments. Some blogs only put out the first few lines in the RSS feed (this is a Blogger option), so you have to go to the site to read the whole post. (I think this makes sure their hit counter gets hit!) You list subsciptions as public or private. They provide HTML script so that you can list your public subscriptions in your own blog, and that way you don't have to go in and edit the HTML in your template everytime you want to add a friends blog to your list of links. I like it. Hope you do.
I like them both...but in order to vote...I did read #2 several times just because it was fun.
I think I liked number one better, because it's funny and not hard to read. I'll let Aaron read it let him respond.
Encore! Encore!
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