John Barr: I think our next poet just announced himself, but I'll go through the formalities. This may be the first time ever in literary history that we have had the United States Poet Laureate and the Children's Poet Laureate give readings back-to-back on the same stage. [ applause ] So, so welcome to children's and adult poetry history. It's a great moment. My name is John Barr, I am the President of the Poetry Foundation, and before I introduce Jack formally, I have been asked to let you all know that this session is being videotaped and photographed for the Library of Congress archives, so your presence here and the fact that the back of your head is being photographed means that you agree to be photographed, and of course, we're delighted that you're all here. Thank you. When the Poetry Foundation named Jack Prelutsky the country's first Children's Poet Laureate just a year ago, we had no doubt that children and the poets who wrote for them would recognize his name. For over 40 years Jack's witty, musical poems have been charming children, parents and teachers. At last count he has published over 75 books. That's not a typo; 75 books. And the sales of those books run into the millions of copies. In the world of children's verse, Jack was the obvious choice to be the first Children's Poet Laureate. But we are just as sure that his name would be new and unfamiliar to the larger world of contemporary and adult poetry. That is because the poetry world is quite Balkanized these days. It's many different separate kingdoms or fiefdoms. There's cowboy poetry, performance and rap poetry, children's poetry and then the so-called serious poetry. Each of these has its own poets, its own heroes, its own audience and its own esthetics. All of these branches of writing share the name poetry, but they don't share much else. The Poetry Foundation, which publishes "Poetry" magazine, which is the oldest literary magazine of its kind in the world, and also recently received a major financial gift from Ruth Lilly of the Lilly pharmaceutical family, believes that this award, this Children's Poet Laureate Award will raise awareness and bring recognition to an important corner of the poetry world. It's important because children are the future generations of readers of poetry in all of those manifold varieties I mentioned. Indeed, a recent study shows that a person who encounters poetry at an early age is the most likely to become a lifelong lover of poetry. For this reason, the Poetry Foundation is especially grateful to the Library of Congress and to the National Endowment for the Arts for the invitation to Jack to read at the National Book Festival. Jack was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940. He attended Hunter College in Manhattan and worked at various times as a folk singer, an opera singer, a truck driver, a photographer, a plumber's assistant, not to be confused with plumber's helper, I'm told. [ laughter ] A piano mover, a cab driver, and a stand-up comedian. He is married to Carolyn, who is with us today, and they live in Seattle. Jack collects frog miniatures, art and children's poetry books. The latter he has assembled over 5,000 copies. Over his long career Jack has won many, many awards, including the New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, School Library Journal Best of the Best Books, Parents Choice Award, Booklist Editors Choice, an American Library Association Notable Children's Recording, and of special note, a Library of Congress Book of the Year. Jack has four new books and two new recordings coming out next year and more are scheduled for the year after that. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Children's Poet Laureate. [ applause ] Jack Prelutsky: It's only me. Wow. It's only me. [ laughter ] It's only me. It really is odd. It's the first time that I ever have been not in the children's venue at wherever I'm appearing and with, you know, with other children's writers or poets, and with the grownups. [ laughter ] And I am, however, I turned 67 a couple of weeks ago, which means I'm now more than two-thirds of the way to 100, so I guess that makes me a grownup, too. [ laughter ] But I feel like I have to be like Monty Python up here now, you know, now for something completely different. [ laughter ] I'm sure it's completely different from anything else anyone in this tent is going to do. So what I'd like to do is I brought 21 poems with me, and depending on how much other stuff I say to waste everyone's time, I'll try to read them all. And they're in -- except for the first and last poems, they're in no particular order. Well, my very first poem, one of my very -- I'm going to read you one of my very first poems that was published exactly 40 years ago this year, 1967, in a book called The Gopher in the Garden. It sold about 23 copies, of which I bought 20. [ laughter ] And I kept -- see, I didn't know anything. I mean, I don't know that much now but I knew even less then. I was -- I also weighed about 70 pounds less and -- but I was an inch taller. [ laughter ] If the trend continues, eventually I'll be a perfect sphere. [ laughter ] Well, but I thought books went on forever. As a matter of fact, I used to smuggle copies of my first book into book stores. [ laughter ] Because they never had them. [ laughter ] And then I would, you know, meet some young lady and I'd say, "Oh, let's go in here and see if they have my new book." [ laughter ] And of course, I'd buy it for her and the clerk was always puzzled because they had no record of it being in the store. [ laughter ] And but I gave away, I gave away books, and then one day I ordered another 10 and they said, "Sorry." I said, "What do you mean sorry?" He said, "Well, it's out of print." "What's out of print?" And they told me, and I actually -- it took me years. I had given away all my books and I finally found one in San Francisco in the twenty-five cent junk bin. [ laughter ] Anyhow, this first poem, which is called "Don't Ever Seize a Weasel by the Tail," I wrote about 42 years ago, and it has absolutely nothing to do with weasels. You should never squeeze a weasel or you might displease the weasel, 1 and don't ever seize a weasel by the tail. Let his tail blow in the breeze, if you pull it, he will sneeze, for the weasel's constitutions tend to be a little frail. Yes, the weasel wheezes easily, the weasel freezes easily, the weasel's tan complexion rather suddenly turns pale. So don't displease or tease a weasel, squeeze or freeze or wheeze a weasel and don't ever seize a weasel by the tail. [ laughter ] [ applause ] I was having supper with my wife some 20 or so years ago, 25 years ago, and I was looking -- and I was looking for a topic for a poem and she said, "Why don't you write about a vegetarian shark." [ laughter ] And I worked on it for a bit and it didn't come out, but I turned the shark into a tiger and then I turned the single tiger into four tigers and the poem seemed to work. This is called "We're Four Ferocious Tigers." You cannot always believe what tigers tell you. [ laughter ] That's the moral. Tigers lie. [ laughter ] We're four ferocious tigers, at least that's what we seem. Our claws are at the ready, our sharp incisors gleam. We are quite intimidating, our stare will make you blink, our roar will make you shiver, at least that's what we think. We're four ferocious tigers, at least that's what we hear. Our ominous demeanor will chill your atmosphere. And yet, you need not fear us, don't scream and run away, we only eat spaghetti. [ laughter ] at least that's what we say. [ laughter ] [ applause ] Thank you. For all you young writers out there, I'm going to tell you my biggest secret. I always carry a notebook. I'm wearing these pants now, I buy them at REI. I have about eight pair in different colors. They are sort of dressy cargo pants. [ laughter ] They have the unlikely name of adventure pants. [ laughter ] I'm not going there. [ laughter ] But one of the advantages of them is they have this extra pocket down here, and I always have a notebook in it, always. Because I'm smart enough to know how stupid I am. [ laughter ] Because I am absent-minded, I am forgetful, and if I don't write down an idea immediately, it's gone forever. Now, ideas come in the oddest times and places. There could be something you have done a hundred times before or a thousand times before and thought nothing of, and then that one time, a little lightening bolt went off. Well, I was in a local market buying something for dinner and I decided to buy boneless breast of chicken, something I had done many times before. But that day I asked a question I had never asked before. The question was, what about the rest of the chicken? Was that boneless, too? Could it walk? Could it fly? What kind of a social life does a boneless chicken have? [ laughter ] What do the other chickens think about it? And most importantly, for the continuation of the species, what sort of an egg does a boneless chicken lay? I answer all these questions in "Ballad of a Boneless Chicken." [ laughter ] I'm a basic boneless chicken, yes, I have no bones inside. I'm without a trace of rib cage, yet I hold myself with pride. Try that some time. [ laughter ] Other hens appear offended by my total lack of bones, they discuss me impolitely in derogatory tones. I am absolutely boneless, I am boneless through and through. I have neither neck nor thigh bones and my back is boneless, too. And I haven't got a wish bone, not a bone within my breast. So I rarely care to travel from the comfort of my nest. I have feathers fine and fluffy, I have lovely little wings, but I lack the superstructure to support these splendid things. Since a chicken finds it tricky to parade on boneless legs, I stick closely to the hen house, laying little scrambled eggs. [ laughter ] [ applause ] Thank you. The next poem about a creature that's part radish and part shark exists because of my insomnia and my getting up at about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and getting a banana and something to drink from the kitchen and then turning on Animal Planet and finding -- I happen to be a big Meerkat Manor fan, by the way, but -- Flower and Rocket Dog and those. [ laughter ] But -- and there was a documentary on called "Anaconda: Giant Snake of the Amazon," and here I am eating a banana and I'm going, hey, wait a minute, banana, anaconda, banana, anaconda, banana, anaconda, bananaconda, because the last three letters of the word banana are the same as the first three letters of the word anaconda. I got no sleep that night. [ laughter ] I got on the computer, I wrote a poem about the bananaconda, and then I said, "This is, this is an idea for a book." I will combine flora and fauna. So we have spinichickens, part spinach, part chicken; we have an orangutan and a tangerine, the orangutangerine, et cetera. This is the nastiest creature in the book, the detested radishark, part radish, part shark. In the middle of the ocean, in the deep, deep dark, dwells a monstrous apparition, the detested radishark. It's an underwater nightmare that you hope you never meet, for it eats what it wants, and it always wants to eat. [ laughter ] Its appalling bulbous body is astonishingly red, and its fangs are sharp and gleaming in its huge and horrid head. And the only thought it harbors in its small but frightful mind, is to catch you and to bite you on your belly and behind. [ laughter ] It is ruthless, it is brutal, it swims swiftly, it swims far, so it's guaranteed to find you almost anywhere you are. If the radishark is near you, pray the beast is fast asleep in the middle of the ocean, in the dark, dark deep. [ applause ] Well, I decided to go a bit beyond that concept and it's all because of a nightmare, again, where I woke up and I ran out of the room and I broke my big toe on the door jamb. And I was in bed and there wasn't much I could do so I thought, well, I'll write a book. And since my toes were on my mind, I wrote a book -- I wrote a poem about a creature called shoe hornets, which are these part hornet, part shoe and part shoe horn, actually. And they're helpful. They help you put on your shoes but they sting you when they do, so it's kind of an approach avoidance thing but, but I went on and combined more creatures with everyday objects, and I'm going to recite a couple of these. This is "The Clocktopus," part octopus, part clock. Emerging from the salty sea, a wondrous beast appears, it clearly is a clocktopus, we marvel as it nears. It moves with slow precision at a never changing pace, it's tentacles in tempo with the clock upon its face. While undulating east to west across the swirling sand, it ticks away the minutes and it has a secondhand. We watch it for an hour and it never goes astray. There's nothing like a clocktopus to tell the time of day. And here we have a creature that's part spatula and part loon. [ laughter ] "The Solitary Spatuloon." [ laughter ] At home within a blue lagoon the solitary spatuloon calls longingly as it glides by, "Syrup." [ laughter ] is its plaintive cry. The fowl, both curious and rare, now flips a pancake in the air. Its tail, we note, is well designed with this peculiar task in mind. We watch with wonder and delight until it vanishes from sight. Yet, even as it disappears, faint strains of "Syrup." [ laughter ] fill our ears. We wait and as we wait we yearn in hopes the bird will soon return. But sadly, in the blue lagoon, we fail to spy the spatuloon. I wrote a book about -- [ applause ] Thank you. I wrote a book called Awful Ogre's Awful Day. Awful Ogre is kind of my alter ego. I'm too small too do certain things, he's too big. And we have a lot in common. Among other things, we like to eat. I have a sequel to the book coming out this spring, I think, spring or fall. I think it's the spring. It's called Awful Ogre Running Wild, beautifully illustrated, as was the first, by Paul Zelinsky. Anyhow, here is my breakfast poem -- or Awful Ogre's breakfast poem. [ inaudible ] Okay. So I will try to recite this in Awful Ogre's voice. He's about 18 feet tall, his voice is lower than mine. I do the best I can. Oh, breakfast, lovely breakfast, you're the meal I savor most. I sip a bit of gargoyle bile and chew some ghoul on toast. I linger over scrambled legs, complete with pickled feet, then finish with a piping bowl of steamy scream of wheat. [ laughter ] I was at a friend's house for Thanksgiving. [ applause ] I was at a friend's house for Thanksgiving. She had a little boy. She had two little boys but one was really little and he couldn't wait for dinner and he insisted that his mother give him something to eat. So she put something together and put it on the table and he looked at it and said, "You can't make me eat that." [ laughter ] Out came the notebook. [ laughter ] And here's what I wrote. You can't make me eat that, it's slimy and gooey and icky and yucky and greasy and gluey. It looks like you made it from maggots and mud, some chopped hippopotamus, bug heads and blood. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it to bits, just thinking about me is giving me fits. One taste, and I'm certain I'll instantly die. You can't make me eat that, so don't even try. [ applause ] My mother had rules. One of her rules was if it was on your plate, you ate it. If you didn't eat it at that meal, it showed up at the next one. [ laughter ] And the next day. But after a while, food gets weird. Now, my mother grew up in the Depression and she had problems throwing things away. We had a space in the refrigerator, I still remember exactly where it was, second shelf down about a square foot on the right in the back. It was for food that was too old to eat but wasn't old enough to throw out. [ laughter ] And she'd save it there until it was old enough to throw out, and then I like to think we fed it to my brother, but probably not. [ laughter ] This is called "Deep in Our Refrigerator." Deep in our refrigerator, there's a special place for food that's been around a while. We keep it just in case. [ laughter ] "It's probably too old to eat," my mother likes to say, "but I don't think it's old enough for me to throw away." It stays there for a month or more, to ripen in the cold. [ laughter ] and soon we notice fuzzy clumps of multicolored mold. [ laughter ] The clumps are larger every day, we notice this as well, but mostly what we notice is a certain special smell. [ laughter ] When finally it all becomes a nasty mess of slime, my mother takes it out and says, "Apparently it's time." [ laughter ] She dumps it in the garbage can, though not without regret, then fills that space with other food that's not so ancient yet. [ laughter ] [ applause ] I had written a poem about my mother's meatloaf, which she left in the oven for too many hours when we went to grandma's. My mother was also absent-minded and forgetful. And the meatloaf became something else. I looked at that poem and thought, can I write the opposite about something that's -- about food that just flies apart. And this is what I came up with. It's called "The Turkey Shot Out of the Oven." [ laughter ] The turkey shot out of the oven and rocketed into the air. It knocked every plate off the table, and partly demolished a chair. it ricocheted into a corner and burst with a deafening boom, then splattered all over the kitchen, completely obscuring the room. It stuck to the walls and the windows, it totally coated the floor, there was turkey attached to the ceiling where there never was turkey before. [ laughter ] It blanketed every appliance, it smeared every saucer and bowl. There wasn't a way I could stop it, that turkey was out of control. I scraped and I scrubbed with displeasure and thought with chagrin as I mopped, that I'd never again stuff a turkey with popcorn that hadn't been popped. [ laughter ] [ applause ] Here's a chorus. I'm going to recite it once and I hope by the end of the poem you know it. This -- it's from a poem that exists because of a meal in a restaurant that I had where I ate lunch once. [ laughter ] Because I had some unexpected and unwanted company at my table. The poem isn't -- the poem that grew out of it is entitled "Rat for Lunch." Yes. And here -- the restaurant is no longer there. [ laughter ] But the poem remains. The -- here's the chorus. If you feel up to it, just do it along with me. I -- don't do it in your normal sweet voice, do it in the voice of something you believe might enjoy eating a rat for lunch, a fox, an owl, a cat or one of your relatives. [ laughter ] It's -- Rat for lunch, rat for lunch, yum, delicious, munch, munch, munch. One by one or by the bunch, Rat, oh, rat, oh, rat for lunch. [ laughter ] Okay. Are we ready? Chorus. Rat for lunch, rat for lunch, yum, delicious, munch, munch, munch. One by one or by the bunch, Rat, oh, rat, oh, rat for lunch. Scrambled slug in salty slime, is our choice at breakfast time. But for lunch we say to you, nothing but a rat will do. Rat for lunch, rat for lunch, Yum, delicious, munch, munch, munch, one by one or by the bunch, Rat, oh, rat, oh, rat for lunch. For our snack each afternoon we chew bits of baked baboon. [ laughter ] Curried squirrel, buttered bat, But for lunch, it must be rat. Rat for lunch, rat for lunch, yum, delicious, munch, munch, munch. One by one or by the bunch, Rat, oh, rat, oh, rat for lunch. In the evening we may dine on filet of porcupine, buzzard gizzard, lizard chops, but for lunch a rat is tops. Rat for lunch, rat for lunch, yum, delicious, munch, munch, munch. One by one or by the bunch, Rat, oh, rat, oh, rat for lunch. Last verse. Rat, we love you steamed or stewed, black and broiled and barbecued, pickled, poached or fried in fat, there is nothing like a rat. It's true! Chorus. Rat for lunch, rat for lunch, yum, delicious, munch, munch, munch. One by one or by the bunch, Rat, oh, rat, oh, rat for lunch. Great. Thank you. [ applause ] Here is an entirely -- here is an entirely different view of a rat. And it's funny, you know, for years I have been saying, you know, I'm not a real poet and there are real poets out there, and they tend to agree with me. [ laughter ] But every once in a while I write something more sophisticated. And I had dinner with a famous author now departed, many years ago, who knew everything, I mean, he really did. He was -- he knew physics, he knew chemistry, he knew the Bible, he knew baseball, he knew Shakespeare, he was amazing. And I use that as a jumping off point. This is called "I Met a Rat of Culture." [ laughter ] I met a rat of culture who was elegantly dressed in a pair of velvet trousers and a silver button vest. He related ancient proverbs, and recited poetry, he spoke a dozen languages, eleven more than me. That rat was perspicacious and had cogent things to say on bionics, economics, hydroponics and ballet. He instructed me in sculpture, he shed light on keeping bees, then he painted an acrylic of an abstract view of cheese. [ laughter ] He had circled the equator, he had visited the poles, he extolled the art of sailing while he baked assorted rolls. He wove a woolen carpet and he shaped the porcelain pot, then he sang an operetta while he danced the slow gavat [ spelled phonetically ]. He was versed in jet propulsion, an authority on trains, all of botany and baseball were contained within his brains. He knew chemistry and physics, he had taught himself to sew. To my knowledge, there was nothing that the rodent did not know. He was vastly more accomplished than the billions of his kin. He performed a brief sonata on a tiny violin. But he squealed and promptly vanished at the entrance of my cat, for despite his erudition, he was nothing but a rat. [ laughter ] [ applause ] Puns are like your children, you can be equally proud and ashamed of them at the same time. [ laughter ] Here is a poem entitled "We're Fearless Flying Hotdogs," in which I fill with puns, mostly hotdog puns and one flying pun. It's about a mini squadron of flying hotdogs. I do it in the voice of the squadron leader. [ laughter ] Major Wiener. [ laughter ] I will point out the more obscure puns as I go along. We are fearless flying hotdogs, the famous "Unflappable Five." That's the one non hotdog pun. It's an aeronautic pun. It's -- they're unflappable because they are fixed wing hotdogs. [ laughter ] We are mustered in formation. [ laughter ] to climb, to dip, They do an onion dip, To dive. We spread our wings with relish. [ laughter ] then reach for altitude. We're aerobic wieners, the fastest flying food. Well, it is fast food, of course. [ laughter ] We are fearless flying hotdogs -- Hey, the worst is yet to come. [ laughter ] Possibly the knockwurst. [ laughter ] We race with flair and style, then catch up with each other [ laughter ] and sore in single file. You never saw such daring, Saw such, saw such, sausage, sausage. [ laughter ] Such power and control, as when we swoop and spiral, then slide into a roll. [ laughter ] The throngs applaud our antics, they cheer us long and loud -- Those are footlong cheers, by the way. [ laughter ] There's never a chilly reception [ laughter ] there's never a sour crowd. [ laughter ] And if we may speak frankly, [ laughter ] we are a thrilling sight, we're fearless flying hotdogs, the delicate essence of flight. [ laughter ] [ applause ] When I played in little league many, many years ago, the scores of our games were never like major league ball games. They were more like the scores of NBA basketball games. [ laughter ] Here is a very short poem. The ball game is over and here is the score, they got 97, we got 94. Baseball is fun but it gives me the blues to score 94 and still manage to lose. [ laughter ] [ applause ] I was born in New York in Brooklyn, I grew up in the Bronx. The cats that I knew when I was a kid were not fancy Manx and Siamese and Burmese, they were alley cats, and they seemed to be invincible. I wrote a poem about one. This is called "An Alley Cat With One Life Left." The accent you are about to hear is 100 percent authentic. [ laughter ] I'm an alley cat with one life left. I started out with nine, but lost the first in a knockdown fight with a cat named Frankenstein. My second went soon after that to something that I ate. My third went under a garbage truck, I noticed it too late. [ laughter ] While strolling through the zoo one day I heard an awful roar, roar. [ laughter ] I had strayed into a lion's cage, so much for number four. [ laughter ] I lost my fifth one morning to a ton of falling bricks, then tumbled from a window ledge and gave up number six. My seventh went to a Saint Bernard, I was no match for him. My eighth was squandered in the lake, it seems I couldn't swim. So now I better watch my step, I'm down to number nine. I'm an alley cat with one life left, and glad that life is mine. [ applause ] This poem -- I don't even know where this comes from. It's called "I Am Running in a Circle." I am running in a circle, and my feet are getting sore and my head is spinning, spinning as its never spun before. I am dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, oh, I cannot bear much more. I am trapped in a revolving, revolving, Revolving, revolving door. [ laughter ] [ applause ] I was born in a year of the dragon, 1940, and actually I'm a golden dragon, whatever that means. And I have been partial to dragons for a long time now. But every once in a while a dragon gets tired of being a dragon. It wishes it could have a more normal life. This is a poem entitled "A Dragon's Lament." I'm tired of being a dragon, ferocious and brimming with flame, because of unspeakable terror when anyone mentions my name. I'm bored with my bad reputation for being a miserable brute and being routinely expected to brazenly pillage and loot. I wish that I weren't repulsive, despicable, ruthless and fierce, with talons designed to dismember and fangs finely fashioned to pierce. I've lost my desire for doing the deeds any dragon should do. But since I can't alter my nature, I guess I'll just terrify you. [ laughter ] [ applause ] This is pretty good. I brought 21 poems, I'm going to get 19 in. Here's the eighteenth. After I wrote a book about dragons I wrote one about ogres and trolls and that sort of thing. This is called "Ogre Brag." A callow night in armor, appropriately brave, displayed his lack of wisdom and charged into my cave. He challenged me to battle, in moments it was through. He made a tasty morsel, his horse was tasty, too. [ laughter ] [ applause ] This is a really shameless pun poem that I'm going to end with. I want to thank all of you. I'm really having a great time. I mean, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't expect this [ laughs ]. [ applause ] I mean, no, I mean, it's funny that because I knew, I knew I would have people if I were in the children's venue because they would be there for the people that came before me and after me. [ laughter ] But, but, you know, poets, I mean, you know. Anyway -- [ laughter ] No, I thought I would be kind of lost in the shuffle. Anyhow, this is called "If." And this is even more shameless than the flying hotdog pun, and I think it's appropriate to end with this. If a baseball breaks a window, Does it cause the window pain? [ laughter ] If it rains upon a lion, do the droplets water mane? [ laughter ] If you try to wring a lemon, can you hear the lemon peal? [ laughter ] If you dream that you are fishing, Is your dream a fishing reel? [ laughter ] If an ogre is unhappy, does it utter giant sighs? If you catch a booby snooping, are you sure the booby pries? [ laughter ] If you bleach a bag of garbage, do you turn the garbage pale? [ laughter ] If you tell a horse a story, could it be a pony tale? [ laughter ] If you wish to paint a whistle, will you make the whistle blue? If you're stuck inside a chimney do you suffer from the flue? [ laughter ] If you sketch an escalator, did you practice drawing stairs? [ laughter ] If you separate two rabbits, Are you really splitting hares? [ laughter ] If you're filling in a doughnut, do you make the doughnut whole? [ laughter ] This next one is my favorite, I think. If you're posing as a muffin are you acting out a roll? [ laughter ] If your conversation sparkles, do you thank your diamond mind? If you're followed by a grizzly, do you have a bear behind? [ laughter ] [ applause ] Thank you, oh, so much. [ applause ] Oh, I'm going to cry. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. [ end of transcript ] LOC - jprelutsky 8 3/22/2010