J. Patrick Lewis

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Former Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis grew up in Gary, Indiana and earned a BA at Saint Joseph’s College, an MA at Indiana University, and a PhD in economics at the Ohio State University. Lewis taught in the department of Business, Accounting and Economics at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio until 1998 when he became a full-time writer. Lewis is the author of more than 50 books of poetry for children, which find their shape in both free and formal verse and engage a wide range of subjects from history to mathematics, Russian folklore to the animal kingdom. His children’s poetry has been widely anthologized, and his contributions to children’s literature have been recognized with the 2011 Poetry Award from the National Council of Teachers of English and the Ohioana Awards’ 2004 Alice Louise Wood Memorial Prize, among others. Lewis served as the nation’s third Children’s Poet Laureate, now called the Young People’s Poet Laureate, from 2011 to 2013. He lives in Westerville, Ohio. Source 

Places and Names: A Traveler's Guide

So many places have fabulous names,

Like Fried, North Dakota,

The Court of St. James,

Siberia, Nigeria, Elyria, Peru

The White Nile, Black Sea,

And Kalamazoo!

The Great Wall of China, South Pole and Loch Ness,

And 104 Fairview—that's my address!

 

Thousands of spaces are places to be—

Discover the World of GE-OG-RA-PHY!

 

Travel by boat or by car or by plane

To visit East Africa, Singapore, Spain.

Go by yourself or invite a good friend,

But traveling by poem is what I recommend.

Published:

2002

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Children's

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Ars Poetica

Poems of Place

Literary Devices:

Interrupted Clause

a word group (a statement, question, or exclamation) that interrupts the flow of a sentence and is usually set off by commas, dashes, or parentheses

Litany

Initially a prayer or supplication used in formal and religious processions, the litany has been more recently adopted as a poetic form that catalogues a series. This form typically includes repetitious phrases or movements, sometimes mimicking call-and-response.

Rhyme

correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry