Poetry Month Lemonade

I came across this delightful little book only this week but would love to share it with all my fellow poetry lovers during National Poetry Month.  Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word was written by Bob Raczka.  However, Raczka credits Andrew Russ with being the first person he read who likes to make poems out of a single word, and he apparently loved the idea. So when life gives you word poems, make word lemonade!  Here's an example (minus the illustration):

vacation

ac tion

     i n 

a

va          n

When I first opened the book, it took me a while to get the hang of the poems, as the spacing threw me.  I didn't immediately realize that the sequencing of the letters of the words is drawn from the title. Aha! Then I discovered that the poem is rewritten on the back side of each page in case you don't  'get it.'

vacation

action

in

a 

van

Kind of a form of shape poetry, if you will.  But oh so clever!

friends

fr  e  d

f i   nds

  e d

chocolate

h      at

    co at

 h     o   t

c    oco a

And as you can see, the creativity is not limited to longer words, like 'constellation.' Even 'spring' and 'rain' are able to bloom into poems.  As a matter of fact, 'spring' described exactly how I felt after I read this little book of gems:

spring

i

s    ing

i

sp   in

i

            g

rin

If you were as tickled with these poems as I was, I bet right now you are running for paper and pencil to invent a few of your own.  In my mind, that's the highest compliment we can pay to Bob Raczka.