Buffy Silverman– It Takes a Thief: Part 2

"Hail to the Thief" Bo Hughins

She's at it again.

Last January, Buffy Silverman shared insider tips on how to become an expert word thief.

Today our favorite TLD cat burglar is back on the prowl...

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, #120 – Adam Koford

Please help me welcome Buffy back to Today's Little Delinquent Ditty with another lesson in *safe* snatching.

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In a previous guest post on Today’s Little Ditty, I wrote about one of my favorite tricks for writing poetry: being a word thief. Alas, my thievery is not limited to words. Sometimes I lift the entire rhythm and rhyme scheme from a poem that I admire. Other times I plunder a poet’s approach to her subject.

Here’s a poem that I burgled early in my poetry-robbing career, from Barbara Juster Esbensen’s fantastic collection of poems that celebrates the seasons, Swing around the Sun:

March

Wind swooping
And howling,
Blustering, yowling,
Caught in the branches
Of skeleton trees;

Rain dripping
On bumbershoots,
Splashing on rubber boots,
Filling the sidewalks
With miniature seas.

Read the rest of the poem here.

Can you hear that howling, yowling March storm when you read this poem? Do you feel the blustery, dripping day? When I read it aloud, the rhythm seems to echo the hat-blowing winds of March. (And how could anyone resist a poem that rhymes bumbershoots and rubber boots!)

Reading this poem made me want to write my own poem with spring sounds and sights. At the time that I wrote my March-inspired poem I did not know an iamb from a dactyl or a trochee from an anapest. But by using “March” as a model, I could borrow its rhythm and rhyming pattern.

Sapsucker Rap

Bill drumming
and tapping,
ripping and rapping,
peeling the bark
of paper birch trees.

Sap oozing
and flowing,
dripping then slowing,
luring an army
of beetles and bees.

Feast crawling
and jiggling,
writhing and wriggling,
no place to escape
no path to retreat.

Tongue licking
and lapping,
prodding and slapping
sap-covered ants--
a six-legged sweet.

– Buffy Silverman

I am especially drawn to poems that capture the wonder of the natural world, whether it’s the changing of the seasons, the transformation of youngsters to adults, or the drama between predator and prey.  In Mary Ann Hoberman's award-winning anthology, The Tree That Time Built, Alice Schertle masterfully conveys that sense of wonder with the questions she asks in "Dinosaur Bone":

Dinosaur Bone

Dinosaur bone
alone, alone,
keeping a secret
old as stone

deep in the mud
asleep in the mud
tell me, tell me,
dinosaur bone.

What was the world
when the seas were new
and ferns unfurled
and strange winds blew?

Read the rest of the poem here.

When I read this poem, I wonder what other treasures I might explore in the same way that Alice Schertle addresses her dinosaur bone.  Could I ask an empty nest about the eggs and chicks it once held? Maybe a fading flower would spill the secrets of the bees and butterflies it had lured all summer. Perhaps an old spider’s web would share the life-and-death struggles that it had witnessed. 

What relic might you address in a poem inspired by “Dinosaur Bone?” And what questions and wonders will it reveal?  Take a close look at your favorite poems, and see where a little plundering will lead.

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The verdict is in...

Buffy Silverman is guilty of another terrific blog post!

Be sure to check out Buffy's other nature-inspired posts on Today's Little Ditty:

Giving Nature Its Say
It Takes a Thief (part 1)

Buffy Silverman is the author of more than 60 nonfiction books for children, winning awards from Science Books and Films, the Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College, and the Society of School Librarians International.  She's also written over 100 articles, stories, and poems published in popular children's magazines, poetry anthologies, and educational resources.

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The Ditty of the Month Club is off to a great start this month! Lee Bennett Hopkins has challenged us to write ME poems. What's a ME poem? Click HERE for details. So far I've featured poems by Lana Wayne Koehler, B.J. Lee, and Michelle Kogan. I hope you'll send me yours!

Robyn Hood Black is rounding up the usual suspects. You can find this week's poetry stash at Life on the Deckle Edge.