In the house where Alice Schertle lived as a child, there was a bookcase from floor to ceiling. The children's
books were at the bottom of the case, for easy access, and the adult books, such as Pride and Prejudice, were towards
the top (Schertle 1996).
Alice Schertle says, "I aspired to the top shelf" (1996). Since Pride and Prejudice was found to be out
of her grasp as a child, Schertle's first remembrance of loving a book was a large and well worn edition of Mother Goose.
She memorized the rhymes until she thought she was reading them. Eventually, she was (Schertle, 1996).
Schertle says she eventually read her way up the bookcase, coming to love Pride and Prejudice. "But," she
says, "of all the books I read and loved, it is the poetry that has stayed with me" (Schertle 1996). According to Schertle,
"Though it is still probably my all-time favorite novel, I can quote only the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice.
But I know every rhyme in that old Mother Goose book. I still know many of the poems from A Child's Garden of Verses.
And I can still recite from memory all seventeen stanzas, one hundred and two lines, of "The Highwayman" (Schertle 1996).
Alice Schertle has a history of loving poetry, from Mother Goose to Tennyson. Perhaps it is this long fostered
love that eventually led her to write poetry, though she did a lot of writing before she ever turned to poetry. Schertle
says, "It took me twenty seven books to get around to writing poetry" (Schertle 1996).
Schertle combined her writing with her love of poetry for a product that brings together the best of both worlds and
the best of her talents. She is good at telling a story, but she is excellent at finding the word that fits a certain
emotion, idea or rhythm.
Schertle's poetry picturebooks, such as All You Need for a Snowman and All You Need for a Beach offer "neatly
rhymed and cadenced text [that] keeps the simple story rolling" (Long 2002). Her rhymes are both playful and suspenseful,
giving readers a reason to turn the page. In All You Need for a Beach, you have an umbrealla, shade, sunglasses,
beach towel and lemonade but you still need something else: "Waves come swishing to tickle some toes -- Toes? / Whose
toes are those?/ You know those toes?/ Ten toes belonging to you-know-who./ All you need for a beach is ... / YOU!"
Schertle says of poetry, "It's saying more in fewer words" (1996). She not only says more in fewer words in her
works, but many of the topics are playful and fun.
In her poem "Consider Cow" in How Now, Brown Cow, Alice Schertle plays with language and demonstrates her
poet's eye and respect for words:
"Consider Cow
which rymes
with bough
but not
with rough.
That's clear
enough.
Remember moo
will rhyme
with through
but not
with trough
or though
or tough.
You've got
it now:
there's dough
and bough
and cough
and through
and mough...
er, moo."
This poem appeals as much to the eye as it does to the ear, as the poet in Alice Schertle points out the peculiarities
of the English language. Schertle says, "There's nothing like laboring over one or two lines for a few hours to foster
respect" (Schertle 1996). According to Donohue, "Schertle delights in playing with language" (1995).
Schertle considers herself to be obsessive about language. She says, "I listen to what I'm reading, in my head,
and when I hear something really wonderful, I have to go back and find out how the author did that" (Schertle 1996).
Schertle's poetry is nothing if not fun. In How Now, Brown Cow, a poem is included called "Taradiddle,"
a retrospective poem about the cow who jumped over the moon:
"She landed hard,
they say,
and afterward was slightly lame.
For several days
the curious came to stare,
and many hoped
that she would dare
to try the trick again.
They went away dissatisfied.
She never tried
to jump again,
but gazed for hours at the moon.
They never found the dish and spoon."
How Now, Brown Cow is in many ways a tribute to the cow - real cows on a farm who give milk or the cow who jumped
over the moon. Schertle has the unique gift of combining the ordinary with the unexpected: that is one of the
things that makes her poetry so appealing. Also in How Now, Brown Cow is the poem "Drivin' the Cows" in which
a farmer quite literally drives his cows to Wyomin' ...in a car!
"Headin' on down the highway
Fast as the law allows,
All the livelong day
Yippee-i-ki-ay!
Gonna be drivin' these cows."
Schertle's collection of poetry Advice for a Frog is a tribute to some of nature's most remarkable animals.
One poem is dedicated to the Harpy Eagle, an eagle from the forest of southern Mexico whose eyesight is far sharper than a
human's. The poem is a concrete poem, using the words to create a shape that conveys additional meaning. The poem
reads with immediacy and a back and forth rhythm, as the Eagle's eyes might be darting to find its prey before the Eagle himself
dives to catch it.
"Hunger's keen eye slits the green
canopy, flashes down leafy
corridors, glints in dark
chambers, fasten
on a small
warm
m
e
a
l"
Schertle's depth as a poet is seen well in Advice For a Frog. In the title poem, advice is given to a frog
who is trying to escape a crane: "Muck down, Sink in/ Don't make bubbles / Good luck, Grin Chin / Here comes Trouble."
(The advice is given by the crane.) In the final poem of the collection, a Secretary Bird (a type of bird named
for its unusual crest of feathers that some thought looked like quill pens secretaries used to stick behind their ears) takes
a letter about the peril of the current environment and the danger animals are in.
"Dip your quill
in the sludge
along the river,
in the soot
from the smokestack,
in the poisoned lake,
in the burning rain,
Dip it in the blood of the great blue whale."
According to Donohue, "In addition to being an aesthetic delight, Advice for a Frog contains a plea for greater
environmental awareness" (Donohue 1995).
Alice Schertle loved poetry as a child; as an adult, she has become a craftswoman of language, a conveyer of emotions
and ideas through very few words. Schertle has much to say about writing poetry and about the craft itself. She
does school visits where she shares poetry. First, she says, she gets the children hooked on the poetry. Only
after they are hooked does she examine any of the mechanics of poetry with the children.
Schertle says, "Writing poetry is about sound, and about image, and about a third thing which comes from inside.
I think it is a tantalizingly shy thing. I do not know how to summon it at will. And I cannot name it. But Emily
Dickinson could. She said:
'To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few' " (Schertle 1996).
Schertle's poetry expresses beautifully the nature of poetry itself: language condensed. Poetry is also noticing
things that others don't and presenting them in an unexpected way. Schertle does that time and again in her work.
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