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Jack Prelutsky Quotes


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Jack Prelutsky
September 8, 1940 -
Nationality: American
Category: Poet
Subcategory: American Poet

Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

   

I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's.

   

I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood.

   

I'm usually working on eight or 10 things at once.

   

My wife used to tell me one of my best qualities was that my feet don't smell, but I remember my brother's did when we were kids.

   

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

   

Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect.

   

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

   

I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.

   

When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all.

   

My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts.

   

I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.

   

There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hundred poems or so, except that the bigger books take a lot longer to do.

   

I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it.

   

Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.

   

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.

   

I invented animals and birds - I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.

   

Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.

   

We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.

   

I'm never bored.

    Topics: Short

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