Many mothers have been so deformed in their imagination by brief and unpleasant encounters with modern poetry that they avoid the entire genre. This is not to suggest blame for their state of mind. A few boring classes in high school on William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just To Say” and other strange contrivances would be enough to mystify anyone.
The poets in real life we encounter tend to be maiden aunts who write painfully dull verse of the Hallmark card variety and cigarette smoking anorexics steeped in carefully practiced self-loathing. The poetry they produce is so vacuous or so confusing that one feels socially strained whenever called upon to encounter it. In other words, any sane person in our culture decides early that poetry is not for him.
But when one has young children, there is something stirringly poetic about the experience. All of a sudden, you are mired in specificity and experiences of intensity that cry out for expression. Even more shockingly, the children, once toothless babies with a far-off look in their eyes, begin talking. The emerging speech of young children, molded by the words that surround them, beg for something interesting to say.
That interesting thing is poetry.
What poetry is not is a feeling. Poetry is carefully chosen verse, words that represent concrete realities and abstract ideas, pinned down into a portrait or a meditation. Decidedly, the brain is engaged, not just the heart with all its longings. However, poetry is not simply an inside joke, a code to crack with some hidden meaning. Good poetry offers something to the ear simply in the hearing—and it is best when heard, as in read aloud.
In venturing into lyric verse, poetry in all its forms, as an adult, a child is a wonderful companion. The young have no intellectual baggage to divest themselves of before assessing a work. Listen to a group of fourth-grade girls discuss Walt Whitman and you will not hear tones of esteem and admiration. Rather, their thoughts run more along the lines of, “Leaves of Grass? What a dumb name. That doesn’t make any sense! What kind of title is that?” And so with all the towering figures of our poetic landscape riddled with sacred cows.
Children can teach us with poetry, as with so many other areas of life, first and foremost to enjoy. Instead of seeking out poetry to gratify our egos or challenge us with cryptic messages, poetry can begin as a source of joy. At its best, verse augments lived experience and enhances our senses of the things that really are.
In order to learn how to enjoy poetry with children, we must have something truly enjoyable to offer them. This rules out a great deal of the recent canon, but we still have a good many years of excellence to choose from. A perennial favorite, and not without reason, is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” The collection is available with the illustrations of many greats and nary a children’s collection of poems makes it off the press without the inclusion of a few of Stevenson’s verses. An excellent first foray might be “My Shadow.” This is a poem that is called to mind often, whether walking in the evening sun or sitting at the breakfast table in the morning light.
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
This poem offers form paired with frivolity.
Involving decidedly less frivolity are the works of William Blake. His “Songs of Innocence and Experience” offer a probing look into the world of the child and the creatures that inhabit the strange world into which we are born. Much is said of “The Tygre,” and it is delightful accompanied by Blake’s original water colors. However, the difference between British and American English arguably detract from the poem. Another poem for young ones could be “Infant Joy,” which runs simply:
I have no name
I am but two days old.—
What shall I call thee?
I happy am
Joy is my name,—
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee;
Thou dost smile.
I sing the while
Sweet joy befall thee.
Another good place to start for the right kind of feline-loving kid is T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. This selection is perhaps a bit of a stretch for some, but it can open up a world of possibility through the everyday companion of the cat.
The good news in all of this is you don’t have to start from scratch. Let well-curated collections and sheer enjoyment be your guide.
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