How Do I Love Thee? Play and Transformation

Robert frost referred to poetry as “serious play.”  Some poets, however, are not so serious.  Poets like Edward Lear and Shel Silverstein choose topics that are playful and silly.  Their books are beloved by children and adults all over the world.  Shel Silverstein writes about things relatable to children such as school, chores, and monsters.  While looking through some of these poems I came across this unique poem written in all characters.

A poem appeared in the May/June 1990 issue of Infocus magazine and has since been floating around the Internet. The original authors were Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese of Calvin College & Seminary of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, to wit:

Waka Waka Bang Splat!

The first internet special-characters poem

<  >  !   *  '  '  #
     Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
    ^  "    `    $   $  -
     Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,

    !  *  =  @  $    _
     Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,

    %   *   <  >  ~   #   4
     Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,

      @     [    ]   . .  /
     Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,

     |       {      ,    ,   SYSTEM HALTED
     Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

If students were shown this poem what would it inspire?

If we give them permission to redefine what makes something a poem what will they create?

            Poets often decide which rules they will follow.  Some poems do not appear to follow any.  When teaching poetry to children, however, we tend to start by teaching the rules.  There is certainly value in the rules, but I believe we need to let students know that the rules of poetry can sometimes be broken.