Are you a poet? Don't know it?

Want to be a visual poet? Yes, you can!

Not particularly genealogical in nature, but still fun, is ResearchBuzz's great post on a new fun application called FlickrPoet.

Click here and input text, a poem, a paragraph and it will search for the words and illustrate them with Flickr images. The input screen is black, but don't let that worry you, just type in the words you desire and click "show story."

Photos illustrating your words show up below the story box. To do a new text input, refresh the screen to remove the previous illustrations and clear the story box.

If you can't remember any song verses or poems, click here, a compendium of many writers, poets, quotes and much more.

For fun, I tried Shel Silverstein's "Bear In There." Here's the whole poem:

There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire
--He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there
--That Polary Bear In our Fridgitydaire.

And here's the display for lines eight-11:

The app is a bit quirky. I wanted to use the first seven lines, but it wouldn't let me use the word"hairy," admonishing me to keep the language clean. The fact that the bear's paws were covered in butter didn't seem to be the problem.

The words in the picture are sometimes hard to read (light letters on generally light backgrounds). You may also get different pictures if you do a new search with the same words, but you can't replace individual pictures.

Have fun!