They are short, a page or so, and are intended to guide a classroom discussion in tandem with the study of the person's work. Educators have complimented my skill at constructing a narrative for an artist, and also my ability to find something humorous in every life.
Some lives are funnier than others.
__________
Jack Prelutsky
(Born: September 8, 1940)
Jack Prelutsky never meant to be a poet. A singer, guitar player, friend of Shel Silverstien and Bob Dylan in the beat scene of 1950s Greenwich Village, he worked as a busboy, cab driver, and door-to-door salesman before one day jotting down some quick poems to go along with the drawings he had worked on for six months in hopes of getting published as an artist. The publishers didn’t want the drawings – they wanted the poetry.
Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, parented by an uncle who was a Russian stand-up comedian, Prelutsky was a bullied “skinny kid with a big mouth” who hated poetry and went on to fail college English three times. But his love of music taught him rhythm, and his early musical influences taught him lyrics. Ask him about poetry today, and the 2006 Children’s Poet Laureate and author of over 80 books of children’s poetry remarks: “…I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.” Children’s poetry, he gets. The author of such whimsical titles as “Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems” and genuinely scary works like “Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep” is mobbed by children, even while symphony orchestras play musical accompaniment to readings of his work. The survivor of a childhood fire that killed both parents is known for writing to kids’ emotions, and acknowledging that childhood is often painful; his work “My First Best Friend” is told from the point of view of a boy whose playmates all mistreat him to one degree or another.
He is a master linguist who writes haiku and mirror poems, and who often uses a guitar while composing to get rhythm exactly right, but is irreverent in the extreme. Amongst the menagerie of animals he has invented are the Bananaconda, Uggs, and Scranimals. Asked what qualities he possesses that make him such a fine artist, he replies: “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.” This is the outlook on life that led to him being asked to complete the late Dr. Seuss’s unfinished manuscripts.