Poetry Friday

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Random Noodling.

For Poetry Friday -- "Rhyme & punishment: adventures in wordplay" by Brian P. Cleary; illustrated by J.P. Sandy.

Cleary begins his book with an introduction that is well worth reading.  Informative and easy to follow it includes topics such as "What's a pun?" and simple answers, " A verbal joke using words that can be heard or understood in two different ways."  Cleary reminds readers that knock knock jokes make use of puns. He continues with suggestions about how to decode a pun by considering the context of the sentence or saying the word out loud to help identify similar words or phrases.  Cleary also provides examples that include colorful highlighting of the words that make the pun work as in these examples:

Seven days without ice cream makes one weak.  Jamaica sandwich?

There's additional help at the bottom of the page with definitions of unfamiliar words to help put the pun in context.

The  section titled Music includes this little gem:

My buddy Bert likes Haydn things--

he's sometimes hard to Handel.

I said, "Give me Bach my Schubert,"

'cause I knew he hid my sandal.

 

As Cleary says, "Let the Pun-ishment begin..."  Groan!

Sandy's cartoon style illustrations provide their own brand of silliness.