Don't let the word "poems" in the title mislead you: the texts of the riddles are very short, and their poetic quality comes from the metaphorical, mysterious quality that pervades riddles just as it pervades poetry.
What's really great about this book is that the illustrations make an essential contribution, just like in the best illustrated children's stories. The idea is that Ashley Bryan's bright, beautiful illustrations provide a clue to help you find a possible solution to the riddle.
I'll have more to say about Brian Swann, about Ashley Bryan, and about riddles in Africa (and in the African Diaspora too!) as I update this post all week long, but I'll just start with one of my favorite riddles in the book; this is an Amazigh riddle from Morocco: It is long, it is long, yet it does not reach the tail of a donkey. See if the illustration gives you a clue:
Did you guess what it is? You can see the answer there in the right-hand page: the road or the path. The riddle depends on the "trick" of dimensions: the road is long in its own dimension, but the tail of the donkey is on another plane, different from the road. The road can go on and on and on forever, but it will never reach (up) to touch the donkey's tail!
Here's another one; see if you can figure it out: Trousers rolled to his knees, the prince dashes about in his many-colored coat made without thread. I only figured this one out thanks to the clue in Ashley Bryan's illustration:
Did you figure that one out? It's the rooster! You can see how carefully Ashley Bryan has drawn the rooster with his trousers rolled to his knees, unlike the colorful peacock who has no trousers!
Are you read for another one? If you use the clue in the illustration, I'm sure you'll figure this one out. This is a riddle of the Lozi people of southern Africa: I make long journeys flat on my back.
As you can see, the canoe is traveling on its back: don't let the person lying on his back in the canoe fool you... the canoes, after all, are all traveling on their backs, even when the people in them are sitting up.
I'll share one more riddle here, and then in the rest of the updates, I'll have something more to say about the creators of this book, Ashley Bryan and Brian Swann. But first: one more riddle! This one is also from the Lozi people: Ever since he was born he's been standing like that, one hand on his hip.
Try to guess who he is before you look at the picture!
The answer is a cup! (Or mug.) The riddle gets you to see a familiar object in a new way, imagining the cup as having a body, with some of the same body parts as a human being. You see a man in the picture standing there with a hand on his hip, and then you see the mug, which also has his hand on his hip... so to speak. Compare the English proverb: "Little pitchers have big ears," which gives "ears" to pitchers, and then metaphorically applies to children, "the little pitchers" who have big ears too, so you have to be careful what you say in front of them.
Proverbs that use metaphors have a lot in common with riddles, and you might remember that Ashley Bryan also did a book of African proverbs where the illustrations, much like in this book, provide clues that help you to visualize and interpret the proverb. We read that book back in May; here's that blog post: The Night Has Ears. Here's an example from that book: A log may lie in the water for ten years, but it will never become a crocodile (a saying of the Songhay people of western Africa). Bryan uses the illustration to suggest the way that a log might ... might ... be crocodile-ish, but nothing compared to a real crocodile.
And if you liked this book of riddles by Brian Swann, you might enjoy his other riddle books which you can find at the Internet Archive:
As you can see, that book is about Native American traditions, which is the focus of Brian Swann's work; he has published and edited many books of Native Americans stories, songs, and poetry. In fact, I relied on one of his books for the trickster project just a couple weeks ago: Algonquian Spirit: Contemporary Translations of the Algonquian Literatures of North America. You will also find many more books by Brian Swann at the Internet Archive.
All just a click away, thanks to the power of Controlled Digital Lending!
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