Poetry Friday: Riddle Me, Riddle Me, Riddle Me Ree....

I've been preparing my July Residency lecture for the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I teach in the MFA/Writing for Children and Young Adults program. Here's the description that will appear in the Residency Schedule:

Who Am I? What the Lowly Riddle Reveals: Using the smallest and possibly goofiest gateway possible, this lecture will enter the enigmatic worlds of Ambiguity and Identity via the humble riddle. Riddles develop our ability to think metaphorically, almost always asking us the same thing great literature asks: Who am I and in what ways do I resemble something - or somebody - else? The answers to those questions often elude us, but as we move toward them, we establish both independence and empathy.  This lecture will examine not just the playground manifestations of such a strange form but their elegant precursors, from those in the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book to postmodern puns. We'll talk about nonsense and playfulness. But mostly, we'll think about the way riddles - like metaphors - function as masks, first obscuring and then teasing out identity.

So for Poetry Friday today, I'm posting a couple of riddles.

What's the difference between a cat and a comma?

A cat has its claws
at the end of its paws,
and a comma has its pause
at the end of a clause.

That's a punning riddle from Iona and Peter Opie's book, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren 

Here is an original riddle of my own (you'll find the answer down below, before the comments):

Who Am I?

The wind won't blow? That's where I go.
The hot sun stings? I open my wings.
On my back I carry a heron,
my spine is woven through with ribbon. 

Aristotle thought riddles were important enough to discuss them in his Poetics: "For the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations.....the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor....it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances."

You can find riddles by many wonderful poets - just look at the work of Emily Dickinson, Richard Wilbur, Sylvia Plath, W.H. Auden...and the new Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, who has a whole book of them! ("Her hair's / The stairs.")

Riddles are also common to stories of a hero's journey. There's the classic riddle put to Oedipus bythe Sphinx - "What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening? -  and Tolkein's riddle from The Hobbit -  "A box without hinges, key or lid / Yet golden treasure inside is hid" (answers below.) and of course, there's Lewis Carroll - "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" - who knew a thing or two about playing around with words.

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The solution to my riddle? A fan.

To J. Patrick Lewis's riddle? Rapunzel.

The answer to Tolkein's riddle? An egg.

To the Sphinx's riddle? A man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.

The answer to Carroll's riddle? Who knows? But remember what Nancy Willard says: "Sometimes questions are more important than answers."
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Head over to Heidi Mordhorst's blog - my juicy little universe - for today's Poetry Friday Round-Up.