Writers love words. We love to stir them up, stack them on top of one another, and even let them roll around in our mouths to savor until they dissolve.
That's where Oliver Boliver Butt comes in.
One of my earliest memories of my love of words was mom reading me the stories in The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. The story that still makes me (and even my second grade students) almost giddy is Too Many Daves, in which poor Mrs. McCave had 23 sons, and she named them all Dave.
The delicious names she wished she had named them come in rapid succession: Bodkin Van Horn, Snimm, Hot-Shot, Sunny Jim, Blinkey, Stinkey, Moon-Face, Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face. The rhythm and the silliness of the poetry is almost magical. The line that still makes me giggle is:
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt;
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt
(I'm sorry, but it does)
And that's the poem I cite that started my love for the written word, and for writing those words. I guess that's kind of where the blog title, Write or Die, comes from. If I don't do the former, I fear I may just do the latter.
So, I guess the moral here is, get out there and find your own "Oliver Boliver Butt."
(For a more scholarly look at--and the entire text of--Too Many Daves by Dr. Seuss, check out the Immortal Muse blog here)
I remember reading Oliver Boliver Butt to my little brother, hummm in the 60s? Why can't I find it on Amazon?
ReplyDeleteIt's part of the larger collection called "The Sneetches and Other Stories." All the stories are worth reading (again and again).
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