“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Jabberwocky is the celebrated poem by Lewis Carroll from his novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1872). Rhythmic and amusing, it is considered one of the most noteworthy examples of nonsense verse.
In the story we find Alice lost in the dreamscape of Wonderland where she discovers a strange, unintelligible book. After reading one of the poems inside she mulls over its meaning:
“It seems very pretty, ” she said when she had finished it, “but it’s rather hard to understand!” (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate.”
The wonderfully odd creatures of Lewis Carroll’s imagination still inspire young and old alike—and continue to fill curious heads with ideas.
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a poem from Gassingon we enjoyed:
Whisper louder than whispers
Can talk the night away
The fairy dust gathers when we sleep
we take with us each day
To protect and project us
into where we are meant to go
without the dust the magic
how the way.. would we ever know…
—by gassingon
POETRY PROMPT: Try your hand at a little nonsense verse! Unleash your imagination: Invent a truly bizarre creature and write a poem about it. What name will you give it? What does it look like? What in the world is it doing? Why? Create wacky, nonsensical words and weave them throughout your poem. It’ll be krincuffles of fun!
Photo by Ben Crowe. Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Heather Eure.
________________________
Sometimes we feature your poems in Every Day Poems, with your permission of course. Thanks for writing with us!
Browse Fairy Tale Poems
Browse more Poetry Prompts
Browse more Writing Prompts
- Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
- Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
- Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018
Donna says
Gassingon – your rhyme is wonderful… and this line is just so cool: To protect and project us…. oh, I love that. I love the whole thing, really, but that especially struck me. 🙂 Glad you are here!
Maureen Doallas says
Welcome, Gassingon. Lovely piece! I especially like “without the dust the magic”.
Some may recall from “Neruda’s Memoirs” my poem “Upon Seeing Alice in 3D”. It was a fun poem to write.
Richard Maxson says
Here is an image I took to go with this nonsense poem:
http://tinyurl.com/pqp27na
Rasannia and the Snee
The shine was lopsome and hepsolee,
when dared strolled fair Rasannia
within the bost of Wimpersee,
where sythen wrot the freckful Snee.
Rasannia, Rasannia the sible ron—Hyyah!
Both fittle lok and briggen lok ner a’gwonoc, no ne.
The Snee is rample, rample so be quix a lok a la
and ner gwanoc the ron belon or ner a lok be ra.
Rasannia the Snee and thee we crix both ron and ray.
Monther and our Purrah teaper well the di and do,
tep ne, tep ne in ron or ray gwonoc to Wimpersee, asoo
there fittle lok and briggen lok may ner retoyatoo.
Maureen Doallas says
Richard, I’m awaiting your reading of this aloud.
Takes me back to my days at college of reading Old and Middle English, the former a truly foreign language.
Richard Maxson says
I would be happy to read this aloud. I have done so to myself.
This week’s prompt made me so glad I kept this photo of a Snee. I’ve been tempted to trash it, because no one believed me that I saw the Snee and Bigfoot get into it once. The Snee won and that is how I know there is no such thing anymore as Bigfoot. 🙂
Amy says
Hi i’m new here but i was wondering if this poem has an inside meaning or explanation. Is there a reason why most of the words are made up or are they jumbled up so that when one figures out the pattern they can recreate the poem.
Donna Falcone says
Welcome to Tweetspeak Poetry, Amy! So glad to see you here.
I was wondering what the poem meant or felt like to you?
Rick Maxson says
Hello Amy, and welcome to Tweetspeak. There is no secret code. It just a nonsense poem to respond to the prompt. I mainly made up words that were fun to say and sounded interesting (I hope) when they were read aloud.
The Snee itself is a photo I took of a live oak in Florida. There is a wood there that seems enchanted; there are so many oaks with weird shapes like the Snee. Thanks for commenting. I hope you come around to Tweetspeak often and try a poem or two.
Richard Maxson says
Maureen, thanks for commenting. Writing this took me back as well to the pain of reading Chaucer. I too sensed it had more of a Middle English tone than that of Jabberwackian.
I tried to maintain some consistency of meaning, to make a possible translation of what happened to poor Rasannia at Wimpersee; one cannot say at the hands of the Snee, although some have said it has displayed hands if the moon is right and the moss is in its green transition (clearly not the case when I snapped my rare photograph, at a distance, of course with a zoom lens).
Richard Maxson says
I also have to congratulate Ben Crowe on capturing the even rarer Deorcsiloc, displaying its mating colors, moreover.
Robbie Pruitt says
Man
A man is a mythical creature
Couched in delusions and conquest
Wars, instability and unrest
False masculinity, abuse and insecurity
Man is shadow of self
Puffed up chests, looking for the quest
Collecting dust up on the shelf
Man is underutilized, not yet realized
Seeking to be self-actualized
Man is blood, sweat and tears
He is six packs of beers and wrinkles and years
A man is a mythical creature trying to find his way
He is his word; his integrity; his grit and his sway
Man lives and breathes as Adam, the animated earth
A man is character, he is steel; he has a mighty girth
© February 24, 2015, Robbie Pruitt
Richard Maxson says
Note: This is a variation on a fictitious form called a Paradell, invented by Billy Collins. The odd syntax is the result of the last two lines of each stanza being made from all the words and only the words from the first two lines. The last stanza is made from all the words and only the words in the previous three stanzas. Though this is, more or less, a nonsense form, it is interesting how it forces the poet to make statements on a subject and then explore possible meanings contained in those statements.
Paradell For My Father
They moved like journeys, the thick-veined maps of your hands,
fitting in glass the skewed halos of saints and wings of angels.
The skewed journeys—fitting they moved, veined like halos.
Hands of saints, angels in glass, thick wings and the maps of your of.
I still have the persistent questions of a child—
where is home and when are we going to get there?
Child, where to have home is a persistent get,
when we are questions of and going there—still the I.
How could you have told me of the secret you knew then,
the loneliness, the painting cave, the subtle fire?
You, the loneliness of me, the secret fire painting told.
You knew then the subtle how, the could-have cave.
The wings I knew then, the persistent cave, are fitting:
your child still questions the when and where of angels,
the home of saints, and how the secret painting moved.
Loneliness is maps of glass, journeys thick in fire. They,
like the halos of you, get skewed in the subtle we.
Could you have told me to have veined hands going there?
Simply Darlene says
Jabberwocky is a nonesense poem? Good night Irene, a mystery has been unlocked! My family has called me a JabberwAcky for years… along with my grandpa calling me Maggie the Magpie.
why is the sky blue by
day and dark by night
and grey with thunder and
what about lightening? is God
really throwing it down and
does He wear big, ole gloves? speaking of
down, when will we go
downtown to the soda fountain
and why is it called a fountain when
there’s a counter and red-topped
stools? what’s that handle
called and why doesn’t she make
all three ice-cream scoops chocolate? does
anyone want my vanilla
and strawberry? leave me the
whip-cream. don’t you adore chocolate,
grandpa? thank you for my new pair
of cowboy boots. will you help me off
the stool so i can dance in the aisle? oh!
you like this song too?
(that’s not my contribution, it’s my realization)
Sandra says
Bazaar Creation
Don’t despair
Dampened spirits soon return
Radically to times unknown
Unaffected by the bumbling beetles
Whose whispered contorted cries
Carry about affiliated violent voices
Echoing enormous lavender laws,
Penetrating personal quiet quarrels,
Hindering habits,
Greatly gathering needing nothing indignantly inept
Joyously joining x-shaped xanthics.
Yet you yield zesty zones of opalescent objects of keystone kettles making mortifying mystics fix faulty fantasies