Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss-a poem, a book, poetry Friday, and SOLSC-Whew!

                        For all things poetic, visit Dori at Dori Reads!   It’s Poetry Friday!

    I’m Writing also for The Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC) at the Two Writing Teachers blog!

Could there be anything more clichéd

or old hat,  simply out-of-date made

than to celebrate wildly

and settle in mildly

while reading about Seuss escapades?

I grabbed all the books I could find

to keep moving along with this rhyme

I found several missives

that kept me in stitches

And figured out Seuss blessed us in kind.

These first words of Seuss’s creation,

early laughs - stories of our nation

found zany, early words,

showing always absurd

his beginning imagination.

Happy Birthday dearest Dr. Seuss,

May Lorax and Grinch be ever loose,                    

Mr. Brown, and Horton too,

They are why we savor you

Thank you for all you produced!

                                             Linda

photo credit: garlandcannon via photopin cc

Last week, I started thinking about celebrating one of our beloved children’s poets on his birthday. Although I know there is nothing wrong with acknowledging great appreciation for all the words he’s written, all the drawings he’s made, and all the causes he’s touched, I wished to find some new things to say about him. 

I combed our library and found that out of many, all of his books were checked out but one.  This is a collection of Theodore Geisel's early works, titled The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs the Dough: Early Writings and Cartoons.  Before his fame as a children’s writer, Ted Geisel was a writer and illustrator for humor magazines.  In this book is a collection of some of his funniest cartoons about all sorts of silly subjects, and his words are sometimes nonsensical but hilarious. 

In the 1920’s, a behaviorally outrageous time before the crash, many humor magazines in

colleges were popular, and according to the introduction of this book, many wanted to mimic the Harvard Lampoon.  One weekly was titled the Judge, and there were other magazines like the Cornell Widow, the Michigan Gargoyle, and the Princeton Tiger. 

Also, there was the Dartmouth Jack O’ Lantern and a student named Theodore Seuss Geisel who created cartoons for his college paper but that soon spread across the nation.    According to the book’s introduction by a Richard Marschall, titled “Just What The Doctor Disordered”, Geisel took his mother’s maiden name, added the designation as Doctor, and began to delight many with his ‘bizarre character types, outrageous puns, and corny captions.”  The mood of the 20’s was irreverent and a rising star named Corey Ford, of the Jester, called them A Time of Laughter.  One example in the book is a drawing of a cellist looking at a pianist.  Seuss uses an old joke in his drawing.  The caption reads:  “Curse you, Mr. Whitmann, once more you are off your Beethoven!”  “And again, my dear Gershwitz, you have flown off the Handel.”

Here in this book for adults you can find and enjoy the humor you’ve laughed over with your children for years, and here are the ancestors of all the beautifully strange zoo of animals Geisel created for children, like the Grinch, the Lorax and Horton. 

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss and thank you for all the gifts you’ve given us.

      As all poems are wordy gems, I must share one more little example from the book, although not a poem.  One page is titled, Just What Is A Vernacular Anyway?  The page claims to show answers to a nationwide survey sent to ask what is meant by the phrase “They were talking in the vernacular.”  In one part, a cartoon shows two men in a small plane, looking at one another and obviously conversing.  They have leashes that lead to five funny animals on the ground.  In part, the caption says that a vernacular is “a sort of a yachting hat worn by the drivers of aerial sled dogs.  As only one man can wear one hat at a time, the phrase should be corrected to read, “They talked in two Vernaculars.”

            I hope you can find the book and enjoy it as much as I have.