Friday, April 13, 2012

Poetry Friday

Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted today by Booktalking.

My selection is "Lemonade and other poems squeezed from a single word" written by Bob Raczka and illustrated by Nancy Doniger.



Raczka continues his light-hearted poetry with a playful collection of verses that are part anagram and part riddle.  As the title of his book suggests, each poem is inspired by and created from the one word title.  The reader gets a first glimpse of the poem as letters that appear to be randomly scattered down the page and is challenged to assemble the words of the poem.  A closer look reveals a hidden pattern: each letter appears below the corresponding letter in the title and a horizontal space separates the individual words as in this example from the book entitled --

Bleachers
b  a
 l
 l

       r
      e
   ache s

     her
      e

b  a    s
      e s

    c
 lea   r

       che
      ers  

* To see the traditional view scroll to the end of this post.

A second viewing on the following page provides the completed poem printed in a traditional format.  Raczka has given teachers, students and poetry lovers another imaginative way to play with words and experiment with another poetry form.

Doniger's colorful minimalist illustrations enhance the page without overwhelming the verse.

bleachers
 
ball
reaches
here
 
bases
clear
 
cheers

2 comments:

Carole said...

Since you like word plays, I wondered if you might be interested in finding out more about cryptic crosswords. This is a link to a post I did recently which looked particularly at clues that involved anagrams. Cryptic Crosswords - Anagrams

Betsy Hubbard said...

This book looks so interesting to me. I am adding it to my "must have" list. I really want to try this! Thanks for sharing "Bleachers."

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