Exeter's Excellent Poetry Project

Welcome to Exeter's Excellent Poetry Project

Welcome to our Poetry Project

Your favorite poems could be full of meaning and charged with emotion,

or simply collections of words and sounds that you enjoy.

Share your favorite poems with us as we come together as a community

to learn to appreciate poetry!

Exeter’s Excellent Poetry Project was created in June 2013. This an opportunity for our community to learn to appreciate poetry, without the pressure to analyze and critique.

Send the title and author of a poem you’d like to share and briefly explain why you chose it, to poems@exeterpubliclibrary.org or click here to submit your poem.

It could be a poem you loved as a child (our first introduction to poetry was through Nursery Rhymes and songs,) an old favorite, or something you recently discovered as a result of this project. Just please keep in mind we are sharing these submissions with an all-ages audience.

We will find the poem and post it here, or you can cut and paste the poem for us (don’t worry about typing the whole thing out.)

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll

“JABBERWOCKY” by Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Submitted by Lee-Ann G.

“Sick” by Shel Silverstein

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut--my eyes are blue--
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

Submitted by Amy N.

“I still have most of this poem memorized from when I was little!  Where the Sidewalk Ends was, and probably still is, one of my all-time favorite books. His poems are so smart and funny! And I love them as much as an adult as I did as a child (especially now that I get all of the jokes.)