Let's Pretend: The Mask Poem

Kids love playing pretend. One of my daughters swore she was Elmo for several years, in fact! I think that’s why mask poems are so much fun. A mask poem is one that is written from the point of view of an animal, an object, or even a person (or Muppet) that’s not you. They let kids inside the imagined mind of another kind of being. They let kids gain empathy and also use their imagination. They encourage them to look at an object in a whole new way, and isn’t that what poetry is all about?

As a writer, it’s a blast to create these. They allow you sometimes to express thoughts or emotions you wouldn’t say in your own voice. It’s safer to say them when they’re attributed to some other object.

I feel like a bad mom if I’m tired of my kids. But when I got to write a poem in response to an image of a lemur mother with several babies on her back, I recognized what I felt was a look of frustration and exhaustion on her face. I wrote:

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