Teaching and Mentorship Theme Analysis

I don’t understand
the poem about
the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
and why so much
depends upon
them.

If that is a poem
about the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
then any words
can be a poem.
You’ve just got to
make
short
lines.

What do you mean—
Why does so much depend
upon
a blue car?

You didn’t say before
that I had to tell why.

The wheelbarrow guy
didn’t tell why.

They look nice
typed up like that
on blue paper
on a yellow board.

(But still don’t tell anyone
who wrote them, okay?)

and especially I liked the dog
in the dog poem
because that’s just how
my yellow dog
used to lie down,
with his tongue all limp
and his chin
between
his paws
and how he’d sometimes
chomp at a fly
and then sleep
in his loose skin,
just like that poet
Miss Valerie Worth
says,
in her small
dog poem.

I guess it does
look like a poem
when you see it
typed up
like that.

But I think maybe
it would look better
if there was more space
between the lines.
Like how I wrote it
the first time.

And maybe
that’s the same thing
that happened with
Mr. Robert Frost.
Maybe he was just
making pictures with words
about the snowy woods
and the pasture—
and his teacher
typed them up
and they looked like poems
so people thought
they were poems.

Like how you did
with the blue-car things
and reading-the-small-poems thing.

Yes
you can type up
what I wrote
about my yellow dog
but leave off the part
about the other dogs
getting killed dead
because that’s too sad.

And don’t put
my name
on it
please.

And maybe
it would look good
on yellow paper.

And maybe
the title
should be
YOU COME TOO.

But I want to know
who is the
anonymous poet
in our class
who wrote that
and why didn’t
he
or
she
want to put
his or her name
on it?
Was it like me
when I didn’t think
my words
were
poems?

Maybe you will tell
the anonymous tree poet
that his or her tree poem
is really
a poem
really really
and a good poem, too.

Yes, you can type up
what I wrote about
my dog Sky
but don’t type up
that other secret one
I wrote—
the one all folded up
in the envelope
with tape on it.
That one uses too many of
Mr. Walter Dean Myers’s
words
and maybe
Mr. Walter Dean Myers
would get mad
about that.

And thank you
for typing up
my secret poem
the one that uses
so many of
Mr. Walter Dean Myers’s
words
and I like what
you put
at the top:
Inspired by Walter Dean Myers.

I don’t agree
that Mr. Walter Dean Myers
might like to hear
from a boy
who likes his poems.

I think Mr. Walter Dean Myers
would like to hear
from a teacher
who uses big words
and knows how
to spell
and
to type.

Maybe you could
show me
how to use
the computer
and then
I could type up
my own words?

The bulletin board
looks like it’s
blooming words
with everybody’s poems
up there
on all those
colored sheets of paper
yellow blue pink red green.

And the bookcase
looks like it’s
sprouting books
all of them by
Mr. Walter Dean Myers
looking back at us
[...]

All of my blood
in my veins
was bubbling
and all of the thoughts
in my head
were buzzing
and
I wanted to keep
Mr. Walter Dean Myers
at our school
forever.

And it was nice of you
to read all of our poems
on the bulletin board
and I hope it didn’t
make you
too sad
when you read the one
about my dog Sky
getting smooshed in the road.

LOVE THAT DOG

(Inspired by Walter Dean Myers)

By Jack

Love that dog,
like a bird loves to fly
I said I love that dog
like a bird loves to fly
Love to call him in the morning
love to call him
“Hey there, Sky!”