FOREWORD What’s the difference between a poem and a poem for children That question has been de bated for several centuries The great poet Robert Frost once said that a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom Another wordsmith John Barr a good friend who is also the former director of the Poetry Foundation wrote that a children’s poem begins in delight and ends in more delight Of the definitions of poetry there is no end Elsewhere I have called poetry frosted fire the tunnel at the end of the light the nurse at the birth of the alphabet a ladder to the castle in the air a blind date with enchantment and the sound of silence amplified Whatever it is poetry’s key un locks that strangest of all worlds your imagination I was an unlucky fellow in that I did not discover poetry until I was just barely on the sunny side of forty Then having taught college economics for thirty years I realized that I was in the wrong field with the wrong grasshoppers You see in my el ementary school years no teacher or librarian or Pied Piper Author’s Day writer pointed me in the direction of word magic So I became ah-hem an opsimath That is one who learned late in life Once Sister Poetry grabbed me by the hand it didn’t take long to become a fool for verse I hardly knew what to do with myself I started out by sit ting at the feet of two poets in particular Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll were the best children’s poets of the nineteenth century Their work has en dured for good reason and their books became my constant companions After nearly four years of reading classic po
Foreword ems and children’s poems rhymed and free verse the great poets and the not-so-great even the truly awful I thought I had learned the craft well enough to strike out on my own So I said goodbye to my college students and began cobbling words together at the poet’s trade in hopes of making a living As often happens one week followed another and before I knew it seven years had passed The one word I heard that whole time was NO Rejec tions flew into my mailbox like mad Frisbees And there were days I admit when I thought seriously about giving up and becoming a pianist a glass blower or somebody’s Dutch uncle But I kept tell ing myself what I have told children at the nearly five hundred author visits I have made around the world Nothing succeeds like failure Embrace fail ure make it your friend I fail a dozen times every day and that’s just before lunch One day about thirty years ago the swallows dared and I received an acceptance A publisher in New York had said YES to my first manuscript I thought I felt a butterfly doing the salsa on my heart Although I have never taken a creative writing class many writers have told me the first lesson they learned Find your own voice I suppose that’s good advice but not for me I wanted to write poems in a hundred voices That’s why I decided to explore everything under and over the sun in as many different ways as it’s possible to write poetry The kindest thing anyone has ever said about my work is how different it is from one poem to the next If someone tells me I read a poem the other day and I just knew that you had written it I appre ciate the thought but it doesn’t reach my ears as a compliment Why not Because the poem is always more important than the poet This is why you’ll find many voices in my po ems on subjects like extraordinary women famous monuments African Americans extinct animals weird holidays twins I’m one the Civil War Galileo Michelangelo math and science airplanes underwear salesmen riddles rebuses shape po ems anagrams nonsense poetry and every sort of wordplay Some of my poems are gathered here in yet another exquisite Creative Editions book better educated you’re in for a disappointment I wrote these poems to do nothing more or less than entertain the reader to help unlock imagina tions Have I succeeded I don’t know Turn the page You decide If you picked up Everything Is a Poem to be J Patrick Lewis March 2014
8 ANIMALS elephant bill jackrabbit jack Did you ever hear about Elephant Bill He tramped Elephant grass on Elephant Hill He had Elephant ears and an Elephant nose And Elephant wrinkles in his Elephant clothes Early one morning with the sun on his back Old Elephant Bill met Jackrabbit Jack Who had Jackrabbit fur and Jackrabbit teeth And Jackrabbit jumpers tucked underneath Said Jackrabbit Jack to Elephant Bill Let’s race to the bottom of Elephant Hill Then race back up so that people can see The mountain that ought to be named after me Elephant Bill gave an Elephant laugh He beat Jack downhill by a mile and a half But they got to the bottom and had just When Elephant Bill heard a terrible sound turned around The sound that an Elephant never forgets Jackrabbit had turned on his back-jumper jets And huffing below old Elephant Bill Looked up to the top of Jackrabbit Hill 7 8 9 1
