ANALIZE THIS POEM.

The hippopotamus is strong
  And huge of head and broad of bustle;
The limbs on which he rolls along
  Are big with hippopotomuscle.

He does not greatly care for sweets
  Like ice cream, apple pie, or custard,
But takes to flavor what he eats
  A little hippopotomustard.

The hippopotamus is true
  To his principles, and just;
He always tries his best to do
  The things one hippopotomust.

He never rides in trucks or trams,
  In taxicabs or omnibuses,
And so keeps out of traffic jams  And other hippopotomusses.

CHOOSING A TOPIC TO CREATE A POEM.

The “topic” is the thing you write your poem about. Choosing a topic, means deciding what you are going to write about. Selecting a topic can be the easiest or the hardest part of writing a funny poem. If you let yourself, you can spend hours or even days trying to come up with just the right idea for your funny poem. However, if every time you start to get an idea, you tell yourself it’s not a good idea, or not funny enough, or that you should be able to come up with a better idea, you will never start writing.

Instead, if you force yourself, each time you sit down to write, to use the first idea that comes to mind, you will end up writing a lot more poetry, much of which will be better than you ever expected.

Also, if every time you come up with an idea for a poem, you write it down without worrying about whether it is a good idea or a bad idea, you will soon find you have more ideas than you know what to do with, and many of them will make excellent poems.

Look Around You

But what if nothing comes to mind? Can you just pick an idea out of the air? Of course! Look around you. What do you see? If you are at home, you could write a funny poem about:

• The toaster
• The bathtub
• Your mom
• Your pet
• Your sister’s or brother’s bedroom
• Dinner
• And so on…

If you are outside, you could write a funny poem about:

• A car
• Trees
• A dog
• Skateboarding
• Baseball
• And so on

If you are at school, you could write a funny poem about:

• Your teacher
• Homework
• Your messy desk or locker
• Cafeteria lunch
• Recess
• The principal
• Excuses for missing school
• And so on

how yo rhyme in a poem.

An easy way to find rhymes is in your head. First figure out what sound a word ends with. If the word is cat, the sound it ends with is “at”. Once you know what sound a word ends with, try adding new beginnings to the word. For example, how many words can you think of at end with the sound “at”?

Try thinking of every letter in the alphabet, and adding “at” to it. You will come up with a list that includes bat, dat, fat, gat, hat, jat, and so on. Some of these aren’t real words (such as “dat”, “gat” and “jat”), but many of them are, including “cat”, “fat”, and “hat”.

Another way to find words that rhyme is with a rhyming dictionary. In your rhyming dictionary, you would look up “at”, and it would give you a complete list of all words that end with the “at” sound.

Making funny poems

Funny poems are enjoyable to read. The more a poem makes you laugh, the more fun it is to read. This doesn’t mean that a poem has to be funny to be good. Nor does it mean that funny poems are better than serious poems. There are lots of very good poems that are not funny at all. But if you are trying to write a funny poem, the funnier you can make it, the better it will be.

If you have been wondering how you can make your poems funny, you will be glad to know that there are some very easy ways to do it. In this chapter, I show you several different ways that you can make your poems funny. These include:

• using a “surprise ending”
• exaggerating
• using opposites
• putting your idea in an unusual place
• using funny words
  
• a special type of wordplay known as a “pun”
• a combination of the above

Each of these is a different method you can use to get your reader to laugh. First, let me show you the surprise ending.

How to write funny poems.

Maybe you have thought about writing poetry, but don’t know how to get started. Or maybe you are already writing poetry, but want to learn how to make it better. Whatever your reasons for picking up this book, get ready to have some fun! Just by reading a few chapters in this book, you will be able to write funny, exciting poetry. By learning a few specific tricks and techniques, you will soon be amazed at your own poetic skill. Most importantly, you will have a lot of fun doing it.

But what if you fail? What if you find can’t write poetry? Or worse, what if you write a poem and someone tells you it isn’t any good? I swear to you, cross my heart, if you can read this book, you can write poetry. In fact, you will soon find that it is nearly impossible to fail. I say “nearly” because there is really only one way you can fail when it comes to writing poetry: to not write at all. If you have written a poem, you have succeeded, even if someone else tells you they don’t like it.

Writing poetry works the same way. Each time you do it, you get a little bit better. If someone tells you “your poem isn’t any good”, pay no attention. Each poem you write makes you a better poet. If you write a new poem every day for a month, you will be a better poet at the end of the month than you were when you started.

TIP: You become a good poet by writing lots of poems. Each time you write a new poem, try to make it as good as you can and your skill will improve with each poem you write.