Silly Poetry Friday 29

Perhaps I should start calling this category Silly Late Poetry? 'Cuz I'm always late in posting this darn thing, aren't I? Ah well...

In the past few weeks this one poem has been playing in my mind like a really nasty ear worm, and I can't get the damn fool thing out of my head. I'm hoping if I post it here, it will go away! I loved this poem as a kid – it was goofy and silly and had just the right amount of creepiness to hold my attention but not scare me too much. Ever heard of The Goops? It's a poem from a collection called Goops and How to Be Them, written and illustrated by Gelett Burgess, who apparently is the true author of the Purple Cow poem! (I had always thought it was Odgen Nash. Aren't I the silly one?)

Well, apparently The Goops are back in a really big way – I found this web site devoted to reissuing the original books, with the goal of bringing "proper manners and polite behavior back into the lives of contemporary families." Ummm...I hate to break it to these folks, but I don't think reading silly poems about weird-looking bald kids is gonna change any contemporary kid's behavior. My brother and sister and I loved reading this poem for no other reason than to have a good laugh, and sometimes, if memory serves me correctly, we pretended to be a goop at the dinner table (I'll tell ya what will change a kid's rotten table manners – a strict mother who will threaten to shorten your life span if you don't smarten up PDQ).

Ok, enough goop talk. Here's the poem (scanned from The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature, edited and with an introduction by Margaret E. Martignoni).

Comments

[Beth]

I must confess to a bit of "Goopiness."
(Did I talk with my mouth full that day?)

[Sara O'Leary]

Oh we have that Goops book somewhere! I think I even bought it before I had any goops of my own.

[Ellen]

I remember reading the Goops! We were pretty much a family of goops so I can testify to the book being completely useless.