Most of the bouncy Mother Goose rhymes were written as thinly disguised political spoofs or protests with children nowhere in sight or mind. Such poems no longer fly with kids, but we won’t cook that goose here. Instead let’s look at what goes into researching and writing poems for children to read today.
Get to know children of all ages well.
Find out what encourages, worries, or speaks to kids from preschoolers to elementary school children to teens. Being around your unique readers will help you to know how to write for a particular age group, but you can also research their most likely areas of interests and typical stages of child development.
Read poems published for children.
Yes, include those Mother Goose nursery rhymes and other classics, but focus on contemporary poems written with kids in mind.
Keep each line in line with the age of your readers.
The younger the child, the simpler a poem needs to be. For instance, young children love a regular rhythm or bouncy beat. Since they’re learning words themselves, toddlers and preschoolers like the sounds of words such as those sound echoes they can easily hear in rhyme and alliteration.
Turn up the volume.
By repeating the first sound of a word within a line, the resulting alliteration will enliven the sound and tempo of your poem. For example, “Big, bright beads of rain wet down the window.” If you carry sounds to extreme, alliteration creates kid-friendly tongue twisters such as “Suzy sells seashells by the seashore.” (Guess Suz didn’t live in FL where shells can be found for free :)
Use strong nouns and active verbs for your rhyming pairs.
The nouns you choose can quickly sketch a picture of a person, place, or thing for the child to envision. The active verbs will then move those noun-pictures along. For instance, a rhyme of “bird/ stirred” brings to mind all sorts of possibilities you can play with as you create sense with sounds. However, word pairs such as “of/ above” and “in/ when” do not provide a clear sound, a clear picture, nor a clear meaning for anything.
Develop a sense of play.
Good-natured humor appeals to all ages of readers, but the catch comes in knowing what a preschooler, kindergartner, elementary school child, junior high kid, or older teen will find amusing, especially since that can change from one age level to the next or one mood to the next!
Repeat well-chosen phrases for a lively refrain.
This purposeful repetition will help children to join in the fun, get playfully involved in your poem, and remember information. Similar to the refrain of a song, a poem’s refrain can be the same from one verse to the next. Or, vary a word or two each time to develop your theme fully and keep readers interested.
Read each poem aloud.
Tap out the beat. If the rhythm becomes too regular, the poem will sound like a nursery rhyme. That’s perfect if you write for nursery school children but not for older kids, teens, or young adults.
Free poems for older children.
As you write free verse, let the words and lines flow loosely onto a page. Later go back and change the line breaks as needed, for example, by mixing line-lengths or going from short lines to long and vice versa.
Feel free to toss in rhymes and offbeat rhythm.
Free verse does not mean you have to omit all rhyme and rhythm. Free verse just means being free of a consistent beat or pattern readers come to expect.
Read aloud each version and revision of a poem.
Does anything seem “off” in the sound, sense, or rhythm? If so, keep playing with words, sound echoes, or line breaks until you find what works for the poem.
Get a professional opinion as needed.
If you want practiced feedback in a critique, consult, or edit of your children’s poems, poetry book, chapbook, or children’s picture book, you will find reasonable fees on The Poetry Editor website – http://www.thepoetryeditor.com.
Keep on reading, keep on writing lots of children's poems.
The Poetry Editor
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Critiquing the poem, hearing the music, singing the song
Let’s take a look at this poem or, better yet, a listen:
Unconditional Love Is A Fallacy
by R. Nella
You ought to know I love you, you ought to know I care.
I ought to know you love him, and that I don't compare.
But he is just a fantasy, with whom you'd like to be.
While I'm a mere reality, the one you'll never see.
We both know the ensuing years, will fill you with temptation,
and you must resist all my fears, that will lead you to damnation.
If you make it through that time, without causing me such grief,
my love for you will still be strong, as sure as my relief.
But chances are, that one day soon, your love I will despise,
as making it unscathed through the years, would be a huge surprise.
Yet even if you make it through, and settle for a lover,
I know already my heart will break, as he will be another.
Those lines have a highly lyrical subject with such solid rhyme and strong rhythmic beat that I stopped hearing the poem as a poem. So my response had less to do with the poetic aspects of the lines than the qualities that go into a song – a song I can hear with hit potential.
I’ll get to that positive aspect in a moment, but my Number One Hit to the poem as is concerns conjecture. The last four couplets (sets of two rhyming lines) seem to be based on assumptions concerning what may or may not happen, rather than what has occurred or what presently is. So whether we see this poem as a poem or hear it as a song, the verses suffer for lack of the detail needed to give us something we can see and hear and feel.
By being abstract and not really grounded in any scene, place, or time zone, the verses lost their credibility with the exception of the first four lines.
Those first four lines have that elusive “it” which goes into the chorus of a highly marketable song. They have words people actually say and thoughts most of us have had, and so, those lines entice us with their honesty, credibility, and familiarity. As listeners, we immediately connect.
To clarify and strengthen the lines even more for a song as you revise, these suggestions may help:
You ought to know I love you. You ought to know I care,
but I just know you love him, and I do not compare.
He is just a fantasy with whom you'd like to be.
I am real, but the one you never seem to see.
If you read both versions aloud, your ears can better assess those suggestions, but basically, the idea was to cut unnecessary words (“that,” “mere”) and round out the beat.
The suggested changes also work toward a natural but rhythmic speech that sounds like people often talk. This enhances the honesty of those already credible lines too.
As the chorus of a song with hit potential, the lines themselves can lead your rewrites for the main verses. For those, I suggest putting the people of the song into a scene with sensory details, so readers (or listeners) can see, feel, and touch that first meeting (perhaps in the first verse) and experience the relationship in verse two and feel the relationship gone wrong in verse three.
Each of those scenes and verses could also tie into the last choral line, illustrating that this guy just never seems to see the very real and wonderful person before him and, perhaps, never did.
Hmmm. This makes me think the title might be “You Never Saw Me.” That title or something similar will ensure the interest of most listeners as they readily relate to your words and easily embrace the singer, the story, and the song.
[For a private writing consult, edit, or critique of your poetry book, chapbook, batch of poems or songs, see The Poetry Editor website – http://www.thepoetryeditor.com. ]
Unconditional Love Is A Fallacy
by R. Nella
You ought to know I love you, you ought to know I care.
I ought to know you love him, and that I don't compare.
But he is just a fantasy, with whom you'd like to be.
While I'm a mere reality, the one you'll never see.
We both know the ensuing years, will fill you with temptation,
and you must resist all my fears, that will lead you to damnation.
If you make it through that time, without causing me such grief,
my love for you will still be strong, as sure as my relief.
But chances are, that one day soon, your love I will despise,
as making it unscathed through the years, would be a huge surprise.
Yet even if you make it through, and settle for a lover,
I know already my heart will break, as he will be another.
Those lines have a highly lyrical subject with such solid rhyme and strong rhythmic beat that I stopped hearing the poem as a poem. So my response had less to do with the poetic aspects of the lines than the qualities that go into a song – a song I can hear with hit potential.
I’ll get to that positive aspect in a moment, but my Number One Hit to the poem as is concerns conjecture. The last four couplets (sets of two rhyming lines) seem to be based on assumptions concerning what may or may not happen, rather than what has occurred or what presently is. So whether we see this poem as a poem or hear it as a song, the verses suffer for lack of the detail needed to give us something we can see and hear and feel.
By being abstract and not really grounded in any scene, place, or time zone, the verses lost their credibility with the exception of the first four lines.
Those first four lines have that elusive “it” which goes into the chorus of a highly marketable song. They have words people actually say and thoughts most of us have had, and so, those lines entice us with their honesty, credibility, and familiarity. As listeners, we immediately connect.
To clarify and strengthen the lines even more for a song as you revise, these suggestions may help:
You ought to know I love you. You ought to know I care,
but I just know you love him, and I do not compare.
He is just a fantasy with whom you'd like to be.
I am real, but the one you never seem to see.
If you read both versions aloud, your ears can better assess those suggestions, but basically, the idea was to cut unnecessary words (“that,” “mere”) and round out the beat.
The suggested changes also work toward a natural but rhythmic speech that sounds like people often talk. This enhances the honesty of those already credible lines too.
As the chorus of a song with hit potential, the lines themselves can lead your rewrites for the main verses. For those, I suggest putting the people of the song into a scene with sensory details, so readers (or listeners) can see, feel, and touch that first meeting (perhaps in the first verse) and experience the relationship in verse two and feel the relationship gone wrong in verse three.
Each of those scenes and verses could also tie into the last choral line, illustrating that this guy just never seems to see the very real and wonderful person before him and, perhaps, never did.
Hmmm. This makes me think the title might be “You Never Saw Me.” That title or something similar will ensure the interest of most listeners as they readily relate to your words and easily embrace the singer, the story, and the song.
[For a private writing consult, edit, or critique of your poetry book, chapbook, batch of poems or songs, see The Poetry Editor website – http://www.thepoetryeditor.com. ]
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