A purple cat (and all of that)

TWEEDLES

Tweedles is a purple cat.
   (Well, fancy that—
   a purple cat.)
And he sits calmly on his mat,
   and it is purple too.

You cannot see him on his mat.
   (Well, how about that.
   An unseen cat!)
In fact, when Tweedles lies real flat,
   he feels quite mat-like too.

So, if you see a purple mat
   (and it seems flat,
   and all of that),
take care! It’s Tweedles (Aah! That cat!)
   just waiting there, for you.

A couple of weeks ago I published this poem as my poem of the month on Facebook and Blogspot. It’s about a rather tricksy purple cat. The poem had first been published by the New South Wales Department of Education back in 2009 in a magazine for primary schools (Countdown, July 2009). Of all the children’s poems I have written, “Tweedles” remains one of my favourites. I’m not sure why. Probably, it is for two reasons, both of which might be worth recording,

Firstly, the poem paints a picture (and quite a vivid one I think) of an interesting character.  The whole poem is only fifteen lines long. Yet from the very first line the reader is startled—or at least I still am, when I reread it—by the fact that the poem is not merely about a cat, but about a purple cat. “Cats” and “purpleness” are two categories that normally never meet in the real world. Thus the reader realises (with a start?) that Tweedles is out of the ordinary; he’s the sort of cat that a reader is only ever going to meet in literature (as in this poem) or in art (as in the illustration at the top of this blog, painted by my wife).

Yet the “cat-ness” of Tweedles also remains. This only adds (I think) to the interest, for cats are, by nature, intriguing. Cats are moody and individualistic; they display a “don’t care” attitude (which their owners either find endearing or infuriating); they create their own stubborn little worlds in the homes in which they live. All of this makes for interesting characters, and I make full use of this “cat” background in my poem. Tweedles, you see, sits on his mat as if he owns it (like all cats do). He has attitude. He even has an agenda.

The fact that the mat is as purple as Tweedles not only accentuates Tweedles’ possession of it, but also allows the essential trickiness of this particular cat to display itself. Tweedles can disguise himself in the purple. He can disappear. He can lie hidden (with his claws at the ready!) for his unsuspecting owner, or for any unsuspecting visitor.

It is at this point that the poem simply ends. The character of Tweedles has been presented. And that’s that.

But there’s a second reason why I think I find this poem appealing. I enjoy the sing-song of the rhythm and rhyme. The rhythm is a definite one; it is almost entirely made up of pairs of syllables, where the first is unstressed and the second stressed, and these occur in groups of four (the literary term is iambic tetrameter) except for the last line of each stanza which has just three of these unstressed-stressed pairs (and is therefore called iambic trimeter). It’s a pretty common meter in English poetry. Actually, I have varied it a bit by dividing the second group of four stresses in each stanza into two half lines (lines 2 and 3 in each case), which strictly makes these lines iambic dimeter. It gives a short, punchy effect at that point in each stanza.

The rhyme also adds to the musical effect. Except for the last line in each stanza, every line in the poem ends in an “at” sound (cat, that, mat, flat). And the last line of each stanza ends in an “oo” sound (too, you). The limited number of rhyming sounds helps tie the poem together tightly (and none of the words were difficult rhymes—they were all common words).

Thus you end up with these two main features in the poem: a vivid character, and arresting rhythm and rhyme. Perhaps you’d like to try composing your own crazy poem along similar lines? Hopefully, by developing the same sorts of features in your own original poem, you will end up with something that you too will enjoy reading and re-reading into the future!