Nonsense Literature

[barnhart]

It was midnight on the ocean, not a streetcar was in sight.
While the sun was shining brightly, for it had rained all the night.
‘Twas a summer’s day in winter, and the rain was snowing fast,
As the barefoot boy with shoes on stood there sitting in the grass.

It was evening and the sunrise was setting in the west,
And the fishies in the tree-tops were all cuddled in their nests.
As the wind was blowing bubbles, lightning shot from left to right.
Everything that you should see had been hidden out of sight.

While the organ peeled potatoes, lard was rendered by the choir.
When the sexton rang the dish rag, someone set the church on fire.
“Holy smoke!” the preacher shouted, as he madly tore his hair,
Now his head resembles heaven, for there is no parting there.

This poem doesn't belong in this thread - it makes too much sense.

Hmm... I see... Yes, well what do you think the shoes of the barefoot boy really represent? Have you always felt this way?

[JohnL]

I'm not really a fan of nonsense literature per se but I did enjoy reading Lewis Carroll in school. I am a fan of Mark Twain myself. When the children were young they enjoyed T.S. Eliot and Shel Silverstein's poem's and stories. Here is their favorite all time poem.
Peanut-Butter Sandwich
by Shel Silverstein
I’ll sing you a story of a silly young king
Who played with the world at the end of a string,
But he only loved one single thing --
And that was just a peanut-butter sandwich.

His scepter and his royal gowns,
His regal throne and golden crowns
Were brown and sticky from the mounds
And drippings from each peanut-butter sandwich.

His subjects all were silly fools
For he had passed a royal rule
That all that they could learn in school
Was how to make a peanut-butter sandwich.

He would not eat his sovereign steak,
He scorned his soup and kingly cake,
And told his courtly cook to bake
An extra-sticky peanut-butter sandwich.

And then one day he took a bite
And started chewing with delight,
But found his mouth was stuck quite tight
From that last bite of peanut-butter sandwich.

His brother pulled, his sister pried,
The wizard pushed, his mother cried,
“My boy’s committed suicide
From eating his last peanut-butter sandwich!”

The dentist came, and the royal doc.
The royal plumber banged and knocked,
But still those jaws stayed tightly locked.
Oh darn that sticky peanut-butter sandwich!

The carpenter, he tried with pliers,
The telephone man tried with wires,
The firemen, they tried with fire,
But couldn’t melt that peanut-butter sandwich.

With ropes and pulleys, drills and coil,
With steam and lubricating oil --
For twenty years of tears and toil --
They fought that awful peanut-butter sandwich.

Then all his royal subjects came.
They hooked his jaws with grapplin’ chains
And pulled both ways with might and main
Against that stubborn peanut-butter sandwich.

Each man and woman, girl and boy
Put down their ploughs and pots and toys
And pulled until kerack! Oh, joy --
They broke right through that peanut-butter sandwich.

A puff of dust, a screech, a squeak --
The king’s jaw opened with a creak.
And then in voice so faint and weak --
The first words that they heard him speak
Were, “How about a peanut-butter sandwich?”

[Neto]

The one my dad taught us, one that probably everyone has heard:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Hobos and Tramps,
Cross-eyed Mosquitoes and Bow-legged Ants
I come before you to sit behind you,
to tell you 'bout something I know nothing about.
Last night about six o'clock this morning
an empty trailer full of coal
came rolling down our back alley in front of our house,
almost killing our poor, dead, cat.
We rushed her to receive her at the hospital,
getting there just in time to see King Arthur
sitting at the forth corner of a round table,
eating vinegar with a fork.

[ohio jones]

I'm not really a fan of nonsense literature per se but I did enjoy reading Lewis Carroll in school. I am a fan of Mark Twain myself. When the children were young they enjoyed T.S. Eliot and Shel Silverstein's poem's and stories. Here is their favorite all time poem.

Good one! Did you share that with your students?

[JohnL]

I'm not really a fan of nonsense literature per se but I did enjoy reading Lewis Carroll in school. I am a fan of Mark Twain myself. When the children were young they enjoyed T.S. Eliot and Shel Silverstein's poem's and stories. Here is their favorite all time poem.

Good one! Did you share that with your students?

No. My children loved that PB sandwich poem. When I was in HS we had to read Lewis and other authors. Lewis was the most enjoyable of the gang. The others were unrelatable to me.
My children’s second favorite poem is The Rum Tum Tugger by TS Eliot.
https://internetpoem.com/t-s-eliot/the ... gger-poem/

[Szdfan]

I’ve used Jabberwocky to teach context clues — one of the strategies for figuring out what words mean in a text. How do you figure out what a word means when it doesn’t mean anything?

[JohnL]

I’ve used Jabberwocky to teach context clues — one of the strategies for figuring out what words mean in a text. How do you figure out what a word means when it doesn’t mean anything?

It’s kind of like Star Trek memes. If you haven’t seen the movie you don’t get the context.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

Ladies and gentleman, skinny and stout,
I will tell you a tale, I know nothing about.
Admission is free, so pay at the door.
Pull up a seat and sit on the floor.

One bright day In the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other.
Drew their swords then shot each other.

A blind man came to watch fair play,
A minute man came to shout hooray!
A deaf police man heard the noise,
He went to kill the two dead boys

He lived on the corner, in the middle of the block.
In a two story house in a vacant lot.
A man with no legs came walking by,
And kicked the lawman in the thigh.

He crashed through the wall, without making a sound,
Into a dry creek bed and suddenly drowned.
The long black hearse came to cart him away.
But he ran for his life and is still gone today.

I watched from the corner of the big round table;
The only eyewitness to facts of my fable.
But if you doubt my lies are true,
Just ask the blind man; he saw it too.

[JohnL]

That’s a really good one to teach kids about oxymorons! Did you write it?

Ladies and gentleman, skinny and stout,
I will tell you a tale, I know nothing about.
Admission is free, so pay at the door.
Pull up a seat and sit on the floor.

One bright day In the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other.
Drew their swords then shot each other.

A blind man came to watch fair play,
A minute man came to shout hooray!
A deaf police man heard the noise,
He went to kill the two dead boys

He lived on the corner, in the middle of the block.
In a two story house in a vacant lot.
A man with no legs came walking by,
And kicked the lawman in the thigh.

He crashed through the wall, without making a sound,
Into a dry creek bed and suddenly drowned.
The long black hearse came to cart him away.
But he ran for his life and is still gone today.

I watched from the corner of the big round table;
The only eyewitness to facts of my fable.
But if you doubt my lies are true,
Just ask the blind man; he saw it too.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

That’s a really good one to teach kids about oxymorons! Did you write it?

Ladies and gentleman, skinny and stout,
I will tell you a tale, I know nothing about.
Admission is free, so pay at the door.
Pull up a seat and sit on the floor.

One bright day In the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other.
Drew their swords then shot each other.

A blind man came to watch fair play,
A mute man came to shout hooray!
A deaf police man heard the noise,
He went to kill the two dead boys

He lived on the corner, in the middle of the block.
In a two story house in a vacant lot.
A man with no legs came walking by,
And kicked the lawman in the thigh.

He crashed through the wall, without making a sound,
Into a dry creek bed and suddenly drowned.
The long black hearse came to cart him away.
But he ran for his life and is still gone today.

I watched from the corner of the big round table;
The only eyewitness to facts of my fable.
But if you doubt my lies are true,
Just ask the blind man; he saw it too.

No, I had heard bits and pieces of it here and there in different variations. I googled it to find this more complete version, which I had never heard in full. Apparently its authorship is anonymous.

I just realized a typo that I copied over: "minute man" should be "mute man".