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Home
Authors
Jack Prelutsky
American
Poet
About the author
Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Problems
#Play
#Imagination
#Writing
#Ideas
#Language
#Opportunity
#Childhood
When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Want
#Now
#Children
#Writing
#Poets
#Voice
We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Poetry
There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hundred poems or so, except that the bigger books take a lot longer to do.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Writing
#Books
#Difference
#Poems
Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Imagination
My wife used to tell me one of my best qualities was that my feet don't smell, but I remember my brother's did when we were kids.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Kids
#Wife
#Feet
#Brother
Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Poetry
I've been influenced by poets as diverse as Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Poets
I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Now
#Life
#May
I'm usually working on eight or 10 things at once.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
I'm never bored.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Life
#Childhood
I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#First
#Poems
I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Trouble
#Reading
#Prose
#Poetry
I always knew would be some sort of artist, but didn't know what.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Artist
After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Idea
#Pen
#Poems
#Evening
My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Teaching
#Books
#Reading
#Computer
#Facts
I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#English
#Language
#Poetry
I invented animals and birds - I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Fun
#Friend
#Months
#Birds
#Poems
#Animals
I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Writing
Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Fun
#Children
#Career
#Old
#Writing
#Poetry
Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Words
#Children
#Poetry
I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.
Jack Prelutsky,
American
Poet
#Fun
#Will
#Writing
#Music
#Guitar