Children's / Backyard Circus (3rd revision)

This is pretty nice work for the most part.  You have a good ear, and you’ve taken a great deal of care with this.  No wonder so many people have had such nice things to say about the poem.  

I can’t help thinking, though, that you could push harder and make this a bit more energetic and zany in tone, and, in the process, have some better rhymes.  My comments may well be at odds with your intention, in which case you should ignore them completely, but hear me out.  Perhaps you are more interested in applying circus language to the natural and normal activities of the animals in the forest, rather than making them go through zany circus antics.  I’ll just share my thoughts for what they’re worth.

From the start, “greatest of ease” pretty much copies the “daring young man on the flying trapeze” song, which I’m not sure is a good idea.  I guess it’s an “allusion,” but very young kids are unlikely to catch the allusion.  One suggestion would be to keep “trees” but make the second rhyme “trapeze.”  Something like “squirrels use the vines as their flying trapeze.”

The second couplet also goes in for a too-easy rhyme, I think.  What does it mean for a bird to “appear from thin air”?  Birds, of course, fly, and are in the air.  It might be better to have the birds do something interesting, something that can be drawn by an illustrator.  Any number of things.  Maybe something like “play catch in mid air” or “do flips in the air”?  Or something better you come up with  The point is to have them do something, not to just be there in the air where you’d expect birds to be.  

I also think it’s a little weak to say the butterflies flutter around “without care”, since (a) who said butterflies should have cares in the first place? and (b) fluttering around without care is not a circus performer activity, so you’ve lost hold on your central trope and merely served up a mundane description of butterflies.  Something more like “and butterflies juggle two clubs and a chair”  —again, I’m not saying this is the line you should use, but I’m improvising the kind of thing that I’m suggesting you go for.

The third couplet is closer to what I’m urging on you, but it still doesn’t keep close enough, in my opinion, to the circus theme that’s supposed to be holding the poem together.  If you wanted to keep the “eights” line, you might want to consider something about “spinning plates” for the second line, since that’s the kind of thing that happens at a circus.  I don’t think people go to the circus to watch performers roller skate.

The meter/rhythm of the fourth couplet is a bit off.

The cricket couplet re-uses the “air” rhyme.  Having them land “we don’t know where” is a bit of a let-down to me, since it doesn’t correspond with a circus act.   For that matter, having them chirp loudly is hardly a circus activity.  

In the next stanza, who are the daredevils?  What is the illustrator supposed to draw?  And who are the folks down below?  Are they people or other animals?  The second line of the couplet might be something more like “and monkeys do flips for the rabbits below”.  Again, I’m not saying that’s the line you want to use, only that I would suggest packing more detail to paint a more vivid, circus-like picture.

Your “spotlight” rhyme doesn’t work since the stress falls on SPOT and not light.  For a perfect rhyme, you’d need to mispronounce the word as spotLIGHT.

OK, I’m not going to go stanza by stanza offering similar suggestions and observations.  You get the idea, I suppose.  I will only say that the ending is a bit weak, merely saying that “I have so much fun,” and joining it with a rhyme-driven “under the sun.”  I don’t know what to suggest, but it shouldn’t be so anticlimactic.  

Having said all this, though, I want to repeat that I like what you’ve done, and I think it has real possibilities if you treat it as a first draft and pound away at it trying to sharpen the circus/animal correspondences and put more meat on the bones of what now strikes me as a fairly nice skeleton, if you will.

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July 13, 2007

by KristinaWood

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27	F	Ocala, FL	July 18

I’m honestly thinking about shelfing this poem for a while.  It’s become way more high maintenance than I’d ever intended and is my first attempt at a cutesy children’s poem.     Thanks for the advice, though.

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This reads more like a poem than a story. You should move this to this piece to poetry.  I like how it reads though.  THis has a great storyline and is great for chidren.

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July 13, 2007

by KristinaWood

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No. of Reviews	Overall Quality	Comment Followup
31	70.0% (10 votes)	28.1%

Age	Gender	Location	Last Login
27	F	Ocala, FL	July 18

It is a poem.  It falls in the Children’s category b/c it is a poem geared toward children.

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This is really fun and vibrant. It reminds me of William Roscoe’s “The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshoppers Feast” The rhyme is excellent and this also has a good rhythm.  I kept getting pulled up in the third stanza for some reason, I think the metre might be out but I can’t place where.  I think it is where the natural stress in the words fall.  It could just be me though.

I think this is wonderful. This might sound strange but it is colourful – I can picture lots of bright colours when I read it.

Great work

JEDoherty

You mention many kinds of animals but what are the daredevils? I know you already said squirrels but that is usually what is on a wire if not a bird.
I would change the one in the trees to racoons. I believe children could draw a picture next to the line (leave a square space for them to do so)of the animal and what they are doing.
  Under the lizard clowns, you count to six but it makes the line off in meter. Maybe count by twos and it will cut the length down. Also, you have a terrier and a chihuahua..two dogs. I would change that as well and have one dog and maybe a ferret doing the hoop jumps.  

This is very cute, and I can see it as a pop up book already.  

I got hung up on two spots:  ”The spotted chihuahua…” didn’t seem to work because the beat of the meter didn’t work for “figure eights.” I also got hung up on the “crickets chirp loudly…” phrase because it was longer than the first few stanzas.  I think consistency in the meter is important in a children’s book. With a little editing, I think this book would be great for kids. The descriptions are vivid and the theme of the circus is really cute.