STUCK IN THE VINYL AGAIN - JOHN CIARDI - SOMEONE COULD WIN A POLAR BEAR

[maggot]

Good Tuesday morning to you all and welcome back to Stuck In The Vinyl Again. Today (March 21st) is World Poetry Day, created in 1999 by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) "with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard". Its purpose is to promote the reading, writing, publishing, and teaching of poetry throughout the world."

Our contribution to WPD is this 1970 Spoken Arts record, Someone Could Win A Polar Bear, written and read by Poet John Ciardi. John was born June 24, 1916 in Boston, Massachusetts. During his career, contributed to the Saturday Review and was a long-time poetry editor, directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and recorded commentaries for NPR. He was known for translating Dante's Divine Comedy and for writing children's poetry, including our example today. On this LP John muses about Polar Bears, About Rivers and Toes, Garden Notes from Zanzibar, goats, Eskimos, Suzie's New Dog, fat firemen and more. There were several laugh out loud moments on this one and I can definitely see why it ended up in the Library Of Congress. 

Side 1

Someone Could Win a Polar Bear
Rules
The Blubberhead
The Answer
Good and Bad Habits
Friendship
The Music Master
About Rivers and Toes
About Moose
The Hearsay
The Buffalo
The Rover
The Widgeonry
Garden Notes from Zanzibar
The Watchamacallit
Four Things to Note about a Goat
A Word about the True-Preposterous
More about Preposteri
The Hairy-Nosed Preposterous
A Warning about the Preposterous
About Eskimos

Side Two 

There Was a Man Who Lived in Perth
Suzie's New Dog
A Fine Fat Fireman
On Being Too Right To Be Polite
The Shark
I Am Writing This at Sea
Captain Spud and His First Mate Spade
Questions! Questions! Questions!
Bear with Me and You May Learn
Why Noah Praised the Whale
Well, Welcome, Now That You're Here
And They Lived Happily Ever After for a While
We All Have Thought a Lot about You
All I Did Was Ask My Sister a Question
Read This with Gestures
Why the Sky Is Blue
The Man Who Lived in a House Too Big
When Happy Little Children Play
Thanks Anyhow
What Johnny Told Me
The Family Reunion
A Fog Full of Apes
Pets
Why Beat Everything

Written and read by  - John Ciardi 

Cover illustration - Ted Smith 

Liner notes - Steven Schwartz

Directed by - Arthur Luce Klein