Jury Judges Jaywalking Jim

Blogging, humor, lessons learned, Teaching and Education, writing 1 Minute

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at writing a tautogram poem for a couple of months. I first learned about this style of poem thanks to the Nobel laureate of WordPress, Brad Osborne.

Brad is a talented writer and poet, somehow managing to come up with an original poem every day and share his works of art at his web site, commonsensiblyspeaking.

One of the features of Brad’s web site that I look forward to is Whittled Words every Friday. In this weekly series, Brad introduces a different style of poem, explaining the structure and rhyming scheme of each one. He then shares a few examples of that style of poem in action, before closing with his own creation, which is always better than the examples.

So it was that a few weeks ago Brad introduced tautogram poems. A tautogram poem is best explained by its Greek root words of “tauto” meaning “the same” and “gramma” meaning “letter”. Basically, all words in the poem begin with the same letter.

Compared to other forms of poetry, this one seemed a bit easier.

As it turned out, it wasn’t so easy, but I managed to come up with something.

I now have even more respect for what Brade is able to do, every day…

Without further ado, here is my tautogram…

Justice

Jim* jaywalks

Jurors judging Jim

Jim jokes, jabbers

Jury jails Jim

Jackass Jim

*no relation to the author. Jackass Jim jabbers. Jim the author blathers…

 

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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31 thoughts on “Jury Judges Jaywalking Jim”

  4. First, my friend, thank you for the recognition and kind words. Your support is a great boon to my art and efforts. I will never be able to thank you enough! Second, what a wonderful poem! I am jealous of your judicial jocularity. This is perfect to form, irreverent, and funny. All my favorite things. I swear there is a poet in you, hiding somewhere behind the juggler and the educator. I applaud your brave steps outside your comfort zone and thank you for sharing your beautiful creation of poetry! This has put a smile on my face that is built to last!

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  6. Jail time for jaywalking? Wow, they have pretty strict laws in the town Jim lives in. He’d better stop joking around and learn to use a crosswalk, or he’ll be in a jumpsuit for a long time.

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  8. Jim, thanks for sharing your histogram poem. I tried a couple many months ago (unknown to me they are referred to as tautogram), and they were a definite challenge. Your poem was very creative, and it was fun to read.

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  12. Jim, I love this form, thanks for sharing it. I will share the link with Colleen for her weekly challenges in various forms of poetry. I don’t recall anyone using this form in particular. 🙂

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