Showcase Archive November 2007

BUSY BIRDS
by D’Lynn Clegg
Category 7–9

SWOOSH! Flew the cardinal.
SWOOSH! Flew the blue jay.
SLURP, SLURP! They drank.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH! They ate.
FLAP, FLAP! They flew.
CHIRP, CHIRP! They sang.

COLONIAL CARRIAGE
by Lydia Perreault
Category 10–12

Here come the horses—clicketey, click.
Here comes the carriage—clackety, clack.

There is Paul with his “neigh, neigh, neigh.”
There is Lightfoot with his “bray, bray, bray.”

Watch for the whip Lightfoot—SPACK!
Watch for the whip Paul—WHACK!

Under the wheels rocks give a sprackle.
Under the hooves rocks give a crackle.

PITTER-PATTER
by Marie Almquist
Category 13–16

Pitter-Patter
The rain splatterd
Kerplattered
On the sidewalk

Fwip-Fwap
The wind whoosed
Fwopelling
The tree’s twigs

Twitter-twat
The bird cheeped
Fwiting
On a branch

Ho-hum
You’re bored to death
Amuffling
Inside the house

IN THE MORNING ON OUR FARM
by Dustin Wagner
Category 7–9

In the morning on the farm
The animals wake up like a charm
The chicks sing chirp, chirp, chirp!
In the morning on the farm
The guineas holler BUCK WHEAT! BUCK WHEAT!
Oh, they sound so sweet!
In the morning on our farm
The goats crunch, crunch, crunch on their hay
The bunnies munch carrots
But the pigs, they chomp all day!
The hens cackle when their eggs they lay
I just love happy farm days!

SWISH, SWASH, SWIP, SWAP
by Ryan Vonesh
Category 10–12

Swish, swash, swip, swap.
These are the sounds made by a mop.
It’s fun to bake a blueberry pie.
But after this, the fun says good-bye.
You trudge over to the closet, get out the mop,
and clean up all the ingredients you dropped.
Swish, swash, swip, swop.
These are the sounds made by a mop.

BUSY BIRDS
Busy Birds is a poem with compact focus and excellent use of repeated sounds. D’Lynn adds imagination to her poem with the words “SLURP” and “CRUNCH”—have you ever heard a bird drink and eat?—yet the words fill out the busyness of the birds, showing their purpose for “swooshing” and “flapping” and “chirping.” This
brings the reader as close to the birds as the poet when she observed them. Congratulations, D’Lynn!

COLONIAL CARRIAGE
Lydia Perreault’s poem rolls out elegant as the horse-drawn carriage ride she experienced. The pacing of her poem is so controlled that it is easy to miss its poetic qualities; however, they are there. The onomatopoetic words fall at the ends of the lines—leaving the reader with the sounds, and the opening words repeat, producing a rhythmic lull of steady large wheels rolling. Her placement of nouns and pronouns in the middle stanzas is subtle—Paul, Lightfoot, Lightfoot, Paul—emphasizing control over the horse, Lightfoot. The final stanza is about the moving, physical parts of the carriage ride: wheels, hooves, rocks, carriage. This is an excellent poem. Congratulations, Lydia!

PITTER-PATTER
Marie shows the yawning confidence of a talented poet. Her invention of words and placement of sounds is practical whimsy that makes the Pitter-Patter as effortless as the weather. Concrete images in each of the four stanzas keep the reader to her point: rain, sidewalk, wind, twigs, bird, branch, and house. A day like that would make anyone yawn, yet she keeps us awake—and herself, barely! Marie, you may need an umbrella more than a book, but with our congratulations, she wins a copy of Feather.