Hear that siren?
That's because Carrie Clickard just pulled up for another visit to Today's Little Ditty.
Today's Rhyme Crime Investigation comes in response to a reader's request for rhyming poetry mentor texts that use made-up words or words with unusual spelling.
While Carrie's posts always leave me with a smile on my face, this one includes so much fun verse, I suggest you get ready for a full-scale smile muscle workout!
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Runcible spoons and slithy toves –
Making good use of made-up words
During our last Rhyme Crime Investigation,
Scanning the Seuss Man, I touched on the subject of invented words. Seuss uses them widely to great effect. Not just Seuss—many of our beloved children's poets, past and present, have played with creating their own words with delightful results.
So the question arises, how do poets know when made up words are the smart choice for a poem and when they’re only a crutch?
Now for those of you who have followed previous Rhyme Crime Investigations, you might already have a handle on some of the wrong reasons to use an invented word. If the only reason you’re creating a word is because no other rhyme works for a particular couplet, you’re on thin ice. The word you create could be brilliant, but it’s more likely to be a noticeable “fake word” that will stand out to both editors and readers—and not in a good way.
Likewise, if you’re altering a word’s shape or pronunciation to fix your meter or to correct a problem with syllable stress, you’ll finish your poem faster but you won’t be fooling anybody. It can be painfully obvious to see when writers have taken the easy route. You’re better off putting in the hard work of rewriting to eliminate those “weasel” words.
So, you might be wondering, is it best to avoid using nonsense words altogether? Not at all. The world of poetry would be poorer without them. Some of my own best reading moments were stumbling over gems like the “runcible” spoon in Lear’s "The Owl and the Pussycat" and the marvelous made-up vocabulary of Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky." But what makes the difference between these poems and the quick fix failures, is that the poets used invented language intentionally, with thought and logic, to make their work stronger or funnier.
So how exactly do they do that?
ONE: The Grand Conceit
Let’s start with what I’m calling The Grand Conceit, the big idea, where an author creates words as part of the core concept of a poem or book. In this case new words are not simply whimsical vocabulary tacked on for a laugh. The invented words form the backbone of the entire work. Take Jack Prelutsky's Scranimals (Greenwillow Books, 2002). The title itself is a clue to where Jack’s going: Scrambled + Animals = Scranimals. The book is a romp through a world filled with chimerical plant-animal hybrids. Prelutsky scrambles not just their names, but the creatures themselves. From Porcupineapples to Toucanemones, you'll be hard pressed to pick a favorite. There’s the elegant Rhinocerose:
Oh, beautiful RHINOCEROSE,
So captivating, head to toes,
So aromatic, toes to head,
Enchantress of the flower bed …
– Excerpt from "Oh beautiful RHINOCEROSE" © 2002 by Jack Prelutsky
and the lowly but adorable Potatoad: "On a bump beside a road/Sits a lowly POTATOAD..." or maybe the Pandaffodil or … maybe you should
pick up a copy and see for yourself.
In
On Beyond Zebra, again we find that the author’s invented words are the stars of the story. Dr. Seuss creates not just new words but new letters: “My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends.” This idea, the grand conceit of a whole new alphabet brings us "FLOOB" the first letter of Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs, and the letter "YUZZ" is used for Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz.
Both cases show us invented vocabulary as a uniquely surprising and effective way of stimulating young readers’ imaginations and tickling their funny bones. But is a big concept the only good way to include made-up words? Definitely not. Let’s look at a few smaller but still savvy ways to use invented vocabulary.
TWO: The Pithy Punchline
The best humorous poems often end with a pitch-perfect, witty last line. There’s something about the timing and rhythm of those last few words that catches us off guard and anchors the poem in our memory. Those endings can be a great place to use an invented word, where the word is an afterthought but the key to the laughter. Take this short poem by J. Patrick Lewis:
CLIPPER SHIP
Cries a sheep to a ship on the Amazon
(A clipper sheep ship that her lamb is on)
"Remember, dear Willy,
the nights will be chilly,
so keep your white woolly pajamazon!"
© 1999 by J. Patrick Lewis, from The Bookworm’s Feast
Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.
Lewis could have used the standard English words "pajamas on" and still had a perfectly acceptable ending line. So he clearly didn’t make up a word to solve a rhyme problem. Instead, by playing off the opening line’s “Amazon” with a created portmanteau word, Lewis elevates the poem from cute to brilliant.
In another witty word tweak, Lewis gives us a whirlwind of fun with his “Her-i-cane.”
There was a curly her-i-cane,
Her name was Lorelei,
And all she ever wanted was
To fly, fly, fly.
She wasn't like the other girls,
For Lori never grew
Into a proper her-i-cane
That flew, flew, flew.
– Excerpt from "Her-i-cane" © 1999 by J. Patrick Lewis, The Bookworm’s Feast
The magic of this made-up word has nothing to do with rhyming at all. It's personification done in a charming, memorable way. Again, Lewis could have used the ordinary word hurricane and the poem would have “worked.” But by tweaking the vocabulary just a little left of normal, Lewis gave the poem a whole new level of whimsy and fun.
THREE: Who are you calling funny looking?
Playing with the way words look.
Sometimes the funny isn’t about how a word sounds, but how it looks. Doubling up on the A’s makes Douglas Florian’s "The Aardvarks" a giggle-producing kid favorite:
THE AARDVARKS
Aardvarks aare odd.
Aardvarks aare staark.
Aardvarks look better
By faar in the daark.
© 2000 by Douglas Florian, from mammalabilia
Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.
In "The Lynx," another charming poem in his
mammalabilia collection (Harcourt, 2000), Florian gets the laughs by spelling “stynx” to match lynx. Again, Florian had no need to make up a word so the poem would rhyme, instead he added to each poem’s surprise and wit by respelling words that worked in the first place – the same way Lewis played with Amazon and pajamazon.
FOUR: Do do do it again!
Words that get funnier every time you say them.
Many of the examples above deal with invented words used just once for a pithy, syncopated “ba-doom-ching” laugh. But funny can come in bigger doses too. Consider J. Patrick Lewis’s "A Hippopotamusn’t" that gets sillier and sillier as the poem goes on:
A hippopotamusn't sit
On lawn chairs, stools, and rockers.
A hippopotamusn't yawn
Directly under tightrope walkers.
A hippopotamusn't roll
In gutters used by bowlers.
A hippopotamusn't fail
To floss his hippopotamolars.
– Excerpt from the title poem of A Hippopotamusn't © 1990 by J. Patrick Lewis
Every time the hippopotamusn’t is mentioned, something new and outrageous delights the young readers. The same way each new line of "The Bear" by Douglas Florian brings another chuckle:
THE BEAR
Come Septem-bear
I sleep, I slum-bear,
Till winter lum-bears
Into spring.
More than that's
Em-bear-rassing.
© 2000 by Douglas Florian, from mammalabilia
Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.
Both of these authors get their timing and the laughs, just right. In each case the tweaked or invented words are intentionally planned, wisely used and never just to “make the rhyme work.”
FIVE: Ticklish tongue twisters
The delight of getting words wrong.
Sometimes an author purposefully misuses or misspells a word, and delight of readers of all ages. We can all relate to the bungled words in Laura Richard’s tongue twisting "Eletelphony."
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.)
– Excerpt from "Eletelephony" by Laura E. Richards, read the rest HERE.
There are so many more excellent examples, I could keep adding from now till November. (Though I think Michelle might protest.) What’s clear in each and every example is that the poet used invented words to elevate, entertain and strengthen their work, never in an attempt to fix a tricky couplet. They weren’t just throwing in the word “tweeple” to rhyme with people or matching purple with “burple.” Which, now that I come to think of it, could work if your poem was about drinking grape juice or swallowing grape bubble gum. Maybe I need to write that poem. Or maybe you do. (grin)
Either way, on that note I will leave you with this bit of wit and inspiration about made up words from Kenn Nesbitt. See you next time on Rhyme Crime Investigations.
Today I Decided to Make Up a Word
Today I decided to make up a word,
like flonk, or scrandana, or hankly, or smurred.
My word will be useful and sound really cool;
a word like chindango, or fraskle, or spewl.
My friends and my teachers will all be impressed
to learn that I’ve made up a word like extrest,
or crondic, or crambly, or squantion, or squank.
Whenever they use it, it’s me that they’ll thank.
They’ll call me a genius and give me a prize,
repeating my word, be it shimble, or glize,
or frustice, or frongry, or frastamazoo,
or pandaverandamalandamaloo.
You’ll see it on TV shows one of these days.
They’ll use it in movies. They’ll put it in plays.
They’ll shout it from rooftops! The headlines will read,
“This Kid Has Invented the Word that We Need!”
I’ll make up my word, and I’ll share it with you,
and you can tell people from here to Peru;
the old ones, the young ones, and those in between…
as soon as I figure out what it should mean.
© 2009 by Kenn Nesbitt, from My Hippo Has the Hiccups
Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.
Listen to the poem read aloud at Poetry4Kids.com.
Thanks, Carrie!
Make sure to check out Carrie's previous Rhyme Crime posts on Today's Little Ditty:
Carrie L. Clickard is an internationally published author
and poet. Her first picture book, VICTRICIA MALICIA, debuted in 2012 from
Flashlight Press. Forthcoming books include MAGIC FOR SALE (Holiday House, 2017), DUMPLING DREAMS (Simon and Schuster 2017) and THOMAS JEFFERSON & THE MAMMOTH HUNT (Simon and Schuster, 2018). Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous
anthologies and periodicals including Spider, Muse, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Havok, Myriad Lands, Clubhouse, Spellbound, Penumbra, Haiku of the Dead, Underneath the Juniper Tree, Inchoate Echoes, and The Brisling Tide.
Kenn Nesbitt has challenged us to write poems for our mothers this month. Click
HERE for more information, then post your poem on our
October 2016 padlet. While I haven't featured any reader contributions yet, I did post
two lines from author John Irving this week. Stay tuned for more.
Irene Latham is welcoming poets and poetry lovers to Poetry Friday roundup with a fun assortment of scarecrows! If you were a scarecrow, what would you wish for? Find out what Irene's scarecrow has to say at
Live Your Poem.
