Issue 4.4 - poems for 2 voices; night black cat

Welcome to Issue 4, Part 4 of WHISPERshout Magazine--featuring poetry by kids ages 4-12!  If you have been writing poetry during National Poetry Month and you would like to see your poem published here at our magazine, click the button below to send us an email with YOUR poem attached. We can't wait to read your work!

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A poem is a good place to pretend you are someone else.  Sometimes this is called a "mask poem" or a "persona poem" because you write and speak with another person's face or voice.  Here is a poem by a 2nd grader in which she pretends to be TWO characters talking!

"Moon and World in Space" by Madelinne, age 8

In this poem the poet Joseph writes in the two voices 
of a wolf and a bird.

"Wolf and Bird in the Forest-Woods" by Joseph, age 8

Did the last line of the bird make you laugh?  You can read more poems for two voices in the book SEEDS, BEES, BUTTERFLIES and MORE by Carole Gerber.

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We never get tired of reading and writing about animals!  Here's a cat poem by Kit. Or is it a night poem?

"The Night Is Like a Cat" by Kit, age 7

Kit wrote that poem in school, and she did not copy it from anywhere...but she did have another poem in her mind that she had read somewhere else.  It is this one:

THE NIGHT IS A BIG BLACK CAT

by G. Orr Clark

The Night is a big black cat

The Moon is her topaz eye,

The stars are the mice she hunts at night,

In the field of the sultry sky.

You can see that Kit borrowed some of her ideas from G. Orr Clark's poem, but then she added her own ideas, like the "gleaming glow of mischief" and the star-mice making "their home in ours."  She also changed the rhythm by adding more words to each line. Poets are artists, and all artists get good ideas from other artists! 

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Speaking of black, here is a color poem by a 1st-grader.

"Black and Me" by Duncan, age 7

Duncan's poem does not rhyme but it has lots of beautiful sounds in it. (Actually there are two lines that do rhyme in the middle. Can you find them?)  A famous book of rhyming color poems is HAILSTONES AND HALIBUT BONES by Mary O'Neill.

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That's our four poems for this issue.  Let us know what you liked by leaving a comment below!

Come on back for Issue 5 Part 1, which will publish on Wednesday, May 3.  And remember, you can submit YOUR work by email--just click the button below--and thanks for WHISPERshouting with us!

The Editorial Staff