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Imagine this situation.

You’re a child (under the age of 10) and you patiently wait to be read a bed time story by one of your parents.
You get in your bed, you snuggle into your pillow and await the happy and calming words that are about to be recited when all of a sudden your parent says ‘Go the F**k to Sleep!’

Does this seem ridiculous to you? Because sadly, or maybe I should say funny enough, that line is actually the title of a children’s storybook.

Go the F**k to Sleep is a story written by Adam Mansbach, that expresses the thought that a large majority of parents have during bedtime.

So, how exactly did this story get its wings? Well, one night after struggling to put his daughter to bed, Adam posted a comment on facebook that said “Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, Go the  — to Sleep.” All his immediately took to the idea and asked when it would be hitting the shelves, and thus a story was created.

Now, you may be wondering how this story comes into play for this unit’s investigations. Poetry and story telling is basically one in the same. Stanzas become pages and writing styles become story genres, so who’s the one that defines a story a story and a poem a poem?

If Go the F**k to Sleep was labeled as a children’s poetry book, then the publics’ interpretation would identify it as such. But nevertheless, the easiest way to compare this story to poetry would be the rhyme scheme present in the book.

Personally, I don’t think that the story is appropriate, especially considering that it is meant for children. However, I will not stomp on the self-expression that Adam Mansbach produced. At the end of the day, the time and effort put into a peice of work far exceeds the opinions of others.

Despite my reluctance of approving of the book, I do have to admit that the audio book is quite funny. It is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and really reflects the ridiculousness of the story.

As a parting gift, I shall include the story for you to listen to. Warning, there is crude language… Obviously!

Oh, skip to 0:50 seconds unless you want to hear Samuel L. Jackson talk about his agent’s twins…

Limericks are poems that usually are humourous and downright ridiculous. They have been given a bad rap in comparison to other “cultivated poems” due to its inclusion of funny, and possibly even dirty phrasings, as well as their lack of length and its odd history.

Limericks, according to fourteenth century English history, were first introduced in Nursery Rhymes and other children poems. But because limericks were short, relatively easy to compose and relatively sexual in nature, they were often repeated by beggars or the working classes in the British pubs and taverns. The poets who created these limericks were therefore often drunkards which often resulted in limericks being referred to as dirty.

Funnily enough, lots of well-acclaimed writers such as William Shakespeare and Edward Lear dabbled in the art of limerick making. These well respected poets were found to be writing something that was considered to be “dirty” in their time. In both “Othello” and “King Lear” some of Shakespeare’s funniest limericks can be located.
An example of one that he wrote in Othello, found in Act 2, Scene 3, would be:

‘And let me the canakin clink, clink And let me the canakin clink
A soldier’s a man
A life’s but a span
Why, then, let a soldier drink’

The structure of a limerick is fairly simple. Basically, limericks start with the phrase “there once was a…” or “there was a…” and has lines 1, 2 and 5 (with seven to ten syllables) with one rhyme scheme, while lines 3 and 4 (with five to seven syllables) have another. Therefore it turns out following this pattern: AABBA.

Because of the simplicity of the limerick, as well as the funny and crass nature of limericks, I actually find them very entertaining! Yes, I know. Shame on me for finding something like this amusing, but it’s like the poetry version of “that’s what she said” (go on and laugh, that is what I’m doing now).

I remember in the third grade, how I remember this I don’t know but anyway, my teacher taught us a poetry unit and one of our mini-assignments was to create our very own original limericks. Mine went like this…

‘There once was a girl name Lucy Jones
Who every like to call “skin and bones”
She wanted to be mean
But her hair was green
So everyone called her doctor ice-cream cones’

Yes, go ahead and laugh once more! But at the time, I thought what I wrote was the best thing ever created. However, isn’t that what poetry is about? Being proud of the work that you produce, without caring about the reaction of others?

Limericks are something that people seemed to dislike because of its crude content, but nobody likes everything so who cares?

Dr. Seuss (pronounced Zoice, yuck right?!).

You gotta love the guy. I mean, his stories basically were the reasons that so many children (including myself) became interested in books.

But apparently, this man’s journey into the world of story-telling is just as wacky as his name.

Fun fact! Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Ted, was caught drinking during his senior year at Dartmouth College. Considering it was 1925, the dean ended up putting him and his 9 other friends on probation for violating the laws of Prohibition. Geisel was also stripped of his editorship of the “Jack-O-Lantern”, which was the college’s humour magazine that he used to publish his cartoons and so he began to publish his cartoons under fake names, to avoid the punishment.

Some of these names were: L. Pasteur, D.G. Rossetti ‘ 25, T. Seuss and Seuss.

As a magazine cartoonist, he signed his work under the name “Dr. Theophrastus Seuss” before shortening it down to just plain, ol’ “Dr. Seuss” in 1928!

Oh, yeah, and the whole doctor thing was totally false… to a certain extent… Seuss considered pursuing a Ph. D in English but that did not end up happening, since he was much more interested in doodling in his notebooks instead of taking notes while he attended Oxford. He did however later receive an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth in 1955, followed by several more honorary degrees from other schools such as Princeton.

How this works, I’m not too sure myself…

Anyway, he ended up coming back to America with his fiancée that he met in England (this was the woman who told him that he was crazy for wanting to be a professor when he clearly wanted to draw) and became the creator of a very popular insect repellent advertisement. The line was considered to be the “Got Milk” or “Where’s The Beef” of the time.

So what was that catchy phrase?

Why it was none other than, ”Quick, Henry. The Flit!”

So how does all of this show that Dr. Seuss’ career inter-connects with the world of poetry?

Well, it’s simple. It’s the whole rhyme scheme. Most children nowadays believe that nothing is truly a poem unless it has rhyming words. And I truly believe that Dr. Seuss had a large part to play in this development. Yes, his creations are found in a story book, but who is to say whether or not he intended for them to be interpreted as stories instead of poems? His works, show similarities to both stories and poems, due to the majority of the piece stating a problem, while the end tends to solve it, so despite it’s lack of stanza-d structure, who’s to say that he wasn’t one of the greatest poets that ever lived?

What is poetry? Or as I so eloquently asked, “que-ce que c’est, po-e-tray?”

Is it something that you are told to read by a teacher once you can understand the stanzas? Or is it someone’s way of expression, that we students end up reading when our teacher tells us to?

I would have to say that poetry is neither. Poetry is something free-spirited and does not deserved to be pinned down with one specific definition. It should not be labeled as “an annoying thing” that  is shoved down the throats of people over the age of 12.

There are so many poetry stereotypes out there, for example:

-all poems must rhyme;

-all poems mention some sort of obstacle the poet has faced, or just have a sad, monotonous tone;

-one must snap once a poem is over…

To this I ask, WHY?

What’s the point? Why is it that people struggle so hard to comprehend a poem that doesn’t sound like something out of a Dr. Seuss book? I get that rhyming is comforting, but isn’t it good to try something new?

There are tons of happy poems out there, like this one,  so again, I ask why? The dark, dingy poetry clubs where people apparently talk about their first pet goldfish dying seems pretty uninteresting to me and I doubt that the “happier” poets appreciate the stereotype.

And really, let’s be honest… Who cares if you snap or not? I’m pretty sure that the intent of getting one’s message out there is far better than receiving praise so I say thumbs down to snapping fingers. Plus, it sounds like you’re calling over a waiter to take you plate away… Rude much?

But I digress, this is just my opinion.

I suppose if you feel the need to, rhyme and snap away!