FREE CHOICE POETRY: A Moose Boosh: A Few Choice Words About Food by Eric Larkin

A Moose Boosh: A Few Choice Words About Food by Eric-Shabazz Larkin

Bibliography:

Larkin, Eric. A Moose Boosh: A Few Choice Words on Food. Bellevue, Washington: Readers to Eaters, 2014.

Review:

A Moose Boosh is a playful spin on the French term amuse-bouche. Eric-Shabazz Larkin creates over forty delightful poems that are accompanied with a "graffiti" style photography. Larkin shares the poems of different characters as they tell their impassioned thoughts of food. Ranging from silly, to historical all the way to comical spins on Dr. Seuss classics, Larkin creates a masterfully delicious collection of yummy poems.

To keep with true form the book opens with a menu style table of contents guiding the reader through a tasty selection of poems for them to digest. Of course the book opens with its name sake "A Moose Boosh" and is followed by other savory poems; including, My Father is a Painter, and Sushi. My Father is a Painter tells the heart-warming story of a fathers food art through the eyes of his toddler son. The abab rhyme scheme flows similar to how the father creates a masterpiece dish. Sushi is a silly free verse poem accompanied by the adorably graffiti sushi art that makes the reader laugh and giggle.

Overall, what makes A Moose Boosh such a fun book is that everyone has an experience with food. Everyone has tasted or tried something that affected their emotions. Because of the books topic the reader can connect to the topics both serious and silly.

Spotlight Poem:

A Desk is Not a Dinner Table

You can eat dinner
at a round table
or a square table.
An oblong table
or a pear-shaped table.

But a desk
is not a dinner table.

You can eat dinner at the beach
or eat it on a boat/
Eat it in a bikini
or eat it in a coat/
Eat it upstairs.
Eat it outside.
Eat it feeling fat
or feeling thinner.

But a desk? No.
A desk is not a place for dinner.

Call it "food in face."
Call it "stuffing belly."
Call it the Internet
with toast and jelly.

Dinner at a desk
needs a re-label.
Because a desk
will never be a dinner table.

Follow-up Activity:

A Desk is Not a Dinner Table offers an assortment of literary and poetic techniques. There is clear repetition, a little rhyme scheme, and the use of punctuation to create rhythm.  I would read this poem aloud and focus on how the punctuation creates a tone of displeasure and annoyance. Then as a follow up I would have students brainstorm the weirdest, most comfortable, or even the most common place they have dinner, then draw from a list of tone words and create a poem about that place. I want to give them the tone, because often times students "don't know" how they feel so giving them a little guidance in that department will make for better poems.