Seuss and his Poetic Moose

We imagine you aren't surprised to learn that Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose is written in poetic verse. From Mother Goose to Dr. Seuss, and a bunch of children's stories in-between, poetry has been a childhood favorite for generations. And for good reason: Verse helps children learn new words and memorization through rhyme; it makes learning to read easier with its regular structure; and it's just fun.

So, yeah, Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose is poetry, and if you're here to double-check that fact, then we're good to go. But if you want to dive into the poetics, to really find out what's happening beneath the surface, then stick around. It really does get interesting; we swear.

Stressed in Anapest

Seuss wrote Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose in anapestic tetrameter, a favorite choice among his early postwar children books—for example, Yertle the Turtle and If I Ran the Zoo were both written in this poetic meter.

We're willing to bet your everyday conversations don't bring up anapestic tetrameter. You probably don't often, or ever, find yourself saying things like, "Did you see the anapest Paul posted on Facebook last night?" or, "There goes Lucy showing off her tetrameter again." So let's break up this confusing word cluster.

An anapest is what we call a poetic foot. You can think of a poetic foot as the individual steps a poem takes per line (foot/step, get it?). And like different people, each type of poetic foot has its own particular way of getting about. In the case of the anapest, each foot has two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. It sounds something like this: da-da-DUM.

The tetrameter part simply explains how far each line travels. Since tetra- comes from the Greek meaning four, we know that each line in the poem will have, generally speaking, four anapests.

We can see this poetic meter right from the start of Thidwick (we've added italicization to help you see it):

Up at Lake Winna-Bango…the far northern shore…
Lives a huge herd of moose, about sixty or more,
And they all go around in a big happy bunch
Looking for nice tender moose-moss to munch. (1.1-4)

Seuss chooses anapests often in his work because this meter gives a poem a quick, comic pace that makes it perfect for his surreal verses for children. In fact, we think you'll find that anapests are mostly used in poems featuring whimsical subjects and upbeat tones.

Sure, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, William Blake's "The Sick Rose" is written in anapest diameter, yet it is anything but upbeat in tone and subject. Generally speaking, though, anapestic meter is best reserved for frolicking fun, whether it's the works of Seuss or other all-time childhood favorites, like "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Moose on the Loose

Some of you may have noticed that not all the lines in Thidwick have four anapests in them, and you are probably wondering what we're trying to pull here. Okay, we admit it: It's true that many lines in the poem have fewer than four anapests in them. In fact, some only have one, such as in this example:

"Get that moose!
Get that moose!"
Thidwick heard a voice call.
"Fire again and again
And shoot straight, one and all!
We must get his head
For the Harvard Club wall." (38.1-7)

In this stanza, the anapests only come one or two feet per line. The reason is because things are speeding up in the poem, leading toward the conclusion. The hunters are coming, the action is building, and the tension is mounting, and to get this across, the lines in the stanzas are shortened. Read this bit aloud and you'll find you have to read faster than at other point. That's the whole point. Here, the shorter poetic structure serves as a sprint toward the end, whereas in the beginning, the poem was pacing itself.

Notice the next lines come with four lines of anapest but are broken up with punctuation within, signaling you to keep the momentum going. In fact, the poem doesn't slow down to offer full, uninterrupted anapestic tetrameter again until Thidwick is safe across the lake with his old moose bunch and the conflict of the hunters and antler squatters has resolved.

Reading Aloud

When reading aloud, the most important thing to remember is not to take things too seriously. Yes, we've been discussing some serious sounding literary terms such as anapest and tetrameter and climax and poetic meter, but sometimes when we discuss these poetic tools, we can forget that they were incorporated into the poem to make it a fun thing to read naturally.

So just relax and have fun. After all, we're talking about a moose that has a bear living on his antlers. What can be more awesomely enjoyable than that? Well, unless you're the moose, of course.