For Poetry Friday --At The Seaside

I went to the seaside today, for work--part of my job is looking after shipwrecks. They are not as needy as my Dear Children, but still need care and attention. I can't think of any nice snappy shipwreck poems, and google didn't give me anything, but I did find this rather lovely poem by Stevenson that I'd never heard before:

At the Seaside

~Robert Louis Stevenson

When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup,
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Mentor Texts today. Go to the next post, and you also get the Second Picture Book Carnival. Enjoy!

And speaking of carnivals, the August Carnival of Children's Literature is up at Po Moyemu-In My Opinion. and it looks great!

The September Carnival will be hosted by me--more to come.

This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort

This Place I know: Poems of Comfort Edited by Georgia Heard, with 18 illustrations by "renowned picture book artists." (2002)

I picked up, more or less at random, this anthology of poems--the idea of comforting poems appealed during this late August time of endings and transitions (I had my first anxiety dream about starting 2nd grade last night). These poems were gathered with a rather more powerful purpose, however--Georgia Heard chose them for the New York City children who saw the World Trade Center fall. But whether the anxiousness-es or griefs are large or small, the poems in this book can provide a starting place for talk, or simply be a comfort in themselves. These are, incidentally, secular poems; the comfort they offer comes from images of hope and happiness, nature and the love of other people.

All anthologies are someone else's choices (unless you happen to be the editor); some choices are agreeable, some are wonderful surprises, and others fail to move. One poem, new to me, which I loved was The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry. I can't quote the whole thing here because of copyright, but here it is with the middle removed:

"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and children's lives may be...
...I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

It is perhaps not surprising that this was my favorite, because of the parental element. Other lovely poems include "Strengthen the Things that Remain" by Nancy Wood, "Dreams," by Langston Hughes, and Emily Dickinson's poem "Hope is the thing with feathers."

Then 18 magnificent illustrators are a bit of a grab bag. I love William Steig's children's books, but the boy in his picture here is the scary type from his New Yorker cartoons. Kevin Hawkes, however, has a lovely picture to go with the Wendall Berry poem.

But who could not like

Trouble, fly
out of our house.
We left the window
open for you.

("Trouble, Fly" by Susan Marie Swanson).

The Poetry Friday Roundup is over at The Book Mine Set today! Enjoy.

For Poetry Friday --a poetry full speach by Ursula Le Guin

"The bringing of light
is no simple matter.
The offering of flowers
is a work of generations."

Ursula Le Guin, from The Vigil for Ben Linder, here on her website.

At the end of my sophomore year in college, I missed the commencement address--I had put off packing too long. So from my tower room, I heard vague noises from the gathered crowds, but not a word spoken by Ursula Le Guin. They were good words, too, as I discovered recently via Google, and full of poetry (and poems, mostly by other people). The words were about words, and talking, and creating relationships and being in the world, all things that Le Guin excels at.

I have two boys. I read to them and talk to them; I want them to talk to me. So I found this bit of Le Guin's speech rather thought provoking:

"People crave objectivity because to be subjective is to be embodied, to be a body, vulnerable, violable. Men especially aren't used to that; they're trained not to offer but to attack. It's often easier for women to trust one another, to try to speak our experience in our own language, the language we talk to each other in, the mother tongue; so we empower each other.

But you and I have learned to use the mother tongue only at home or safe among friends, and many men learn not to speak it at all. They're taught that there's no safe place for them. From adolescence on, they talk a kind of degraded version of the father tongue with each other - sports scores, job technicalities, sex technicalities, and TV politics. At home, to women and children talking the mother tongue, they respond with a grunt and turn on the ball game. They have let themselves be silenced and dimly they know it, and so resent speakers of the mother tongue; women babble, gabble all the time.... Can't listen to that stuff.

NB: The men that I know well enough to talk to are not like the stereotypes here, so I take this with a grain of salt.

But still, reading out loud to my sons, I wonder what they are hearing. So many books about people busily doing things...you can't really ask, after reading "Go, Dog, Go," a question like "how did that make you feel?" (I generally ask, once we get the party scene, "Which dog would you like to be?" And anyway, "how did that make you feel" is such a forced question that the whole communication experience becomes moot).

Reading poetry is a much more relaxing way to offer children a nice subjective experience. I have been amazed at the pure emotional, subjective reactions poems elicit from my kids (although thinking about it, their response is often couched in un-woman-tongue: "Read it Again" they say. Or "I don't like it." Or still more disturbingly, "I don't get it," as if meaning was a possession. But their little faces are just full of flickering expressions, and they aren't running away or hitting each other). Words whose meanings must surely be unclear to them still have meanings when taken together.

In a book where all is clear, it is the words that have power--the dogs are going, and no subjecive feelings can stop them. But in the poems that I think of as "really good", the reader or listener has a voice too. So I try to read them poetry, although it is hard, especially these days while we are painting the living room and the house falls into disaster around it ("how does this mess make you feel, children?").

Here is part of another of the poems Le Guin quotes:

The Blanket Around Her

maybe it is her birth
which she holds close to herself
or her death
which is just as inseparable
and the white wind
that encircles her is a part
just as
the blue sky
hanging in turquoise from her neck

It was written by Joy Harjo of the Creek people, and was published in: That's What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women, ed. Rayna Green (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 127.

The Poetry Friday roundup is hosted today by Kelly Fineman, here today!

Poetry Friday: A Kick In The Head

It's so great to enthuse about a book, with absolutely no reservations at all. A Kick in the Head (2005), a volume of poems selected by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka, is such a book. But this is not just a collection of charming and diverting poems by various skilled authors, charmingly and divertingly illustrated (although it is that). This book is "An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms." Examples of 29 different forms of verse are presented, with the poems in largish type and the explanation of the form in very small parent-reading-size type.

For example, here's a Riddle Poem:

The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space,
The beginning of every end,
The end of every place. (annon.)

And Janeczko notes: "A riddle poem indirectly describes a person, place, thing, or idea. The reader must try to figure out the subject of the riddle. A riddle poem can be any length and usually has a rhyme scheme of abcb or aabb" (page 33)

In the introduction, Janeczko says that "knowing the rules makes poetry - like sports - more fun." It's his hope that knowing the rules will make the "game" of poetry more fun.

I'm not the first to fall for this book. It's won awards, gotten glowing awards, etc. etc. Deservedly so. This book is certainly educational--it's the best guide to poetic forms I've ever read (I can't actually remember reading any others, but there you go). I had never, for instance, heard of a senryu before (a haiku about human nature). But it is also simply a fun book to read to your kids, hoping, perhaps, that they will want to play too.

A Kick in the Head is recommended for children 9-12, but heck. Everyone likes to read fun poetry, and figuring out (and bending) the Rules makes poetry even more engaging.

The poetry friday roundup is at The Miss Rumpheus Effect today!

For Poetry Friday- Talking like the Rain, and a long day without water

In preparation for Poetry Friday, I checked out an anthology of poems for children--Talking Like the Rain, a Read-to-me Book of Poems (selected by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy, illustrated by Jane Dyer, 1992, Little Brown). My six year old is a big fan of my blog, and I thought he might enjoy helping me pick this week's poem. We browsed through the anthology, dipping into poems almost at random. This book offers a mix of older authors (Christina Rosetti, RL Stevenson), and many 20th century poets of whom I know little, and includes a number of anonymous playground type songs, which is always fun. The water color illustrations are enjoyable without being intrusive.

So there we were, browsing, when I was startled to come across this poem, by Joan Aiken, called "John's Song."

It's a long walk in the dark
on the blind side of the moon
and it's a long day without water
when the river's gone
and it's hard listening to no voice
when you're all alone

so take a hundred lighted candles with you
when you walk on the moon
and quickly quickly tie a knot in the river
before the water's gone
and listen for my voice, if for no other
when you're all alone

"That was great." said my son, very seriously. I like it too.

I was surprised at this poem's appearance in this anthology because I knew it before, from Aiken's short story "A Long Day Without Water." It is a very sad story, and not being one to linger over sad bits, I never fully appreciated this song as a "poem." Checking my copy of the story (which appears in A Harp of Fishbones and Other Stories, 1972), I see to my even greater surprise that the second verse isn't in the story. Where did the missing verse come from?

The Kennedys say the poem is from Not What You Expected, another short story collection (1974), where the same story appears. Perhaps Aiken added the second verse then. Taking the question up with google, I found that she wrote quite a bit of poetry, so possibly I will be posting more from her on future Fridays.

Talking Like the Rain got its name from a quote taken from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, and printed at the beginning of the book:

One evening out in the maize field, where we had been harvesting maize, breaking off the cobs and throwing them on to the ox-carts, to amuse myself, I spoke to the field labourers, who were mostly quite young, in Swahili verse. There was no sense in the verse, it was made for the sake of the rhyme...
It caught the interest of the boys, they formed a ring around me. They...waited eagerly for the rhyme, and laughed at it when it came. I tried to make them themselves find the rhyme, and finish the poem when I had begun it, but they could not, or would not, do that, and turned away their heads. As they had become used to the idea of poetry, they begged: "Speak again. Speak like rain." Why they should feel verse to be like rain I do not know. It must have been, however, an expression of applause, since in Africa rain is always longed for and welcome."

I am longing for rain right now myself.

The Poetry Friday Round Up is at Chicken Spaghetti today!

A World of Wonders by J. Patrick Lewis

A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme by J. Patrick Lewis,illustrated by Alison Jay (2002, 40 pages, ages 4-8)

"Travel by boat or by car or by plane
To visit East Africa, Singapore, Spain.
Go by yourself or invite a good friend,
But traveling by poem is what I recommend!"

And indeed these poems take the reader around the world, exploring far off places and the people that explored them, offering helpful mnemonics (I especially appreciated the one about latitude and longitude -- "lines of latitude have a flatitude" and geographical readers.

I really wanted to love this book. It is absolutely lovely to look at--Jay's illustrations, in antique mappy tones, with the crazing of old oil paintings, are things of beauty. The educational content is great. But sadly, the poems themselves didn't quite sing for me; the majority felt rather forced.

One of the more engaging poems was Knockabout and Knockaboom, which the author tells us is set in the Mohave Desert, Southwestern United States (and I did like this sort of informative detail very much). Here's the first verse:

"The wind that whistles desert songs
By spinning tops of sand
Leaves behind a silent sea
Of dune-upon-dune land."

For what it's worth, my six year old said he liked all the poems. And probably this book will appeal greatly to all kids who consider themselves "sciency."

The Poetry Friday round up is at the Farm School today!

Poetry Friday: Three Books of Space Poems for Children

I recently won a copy of Douglas Florian's new book Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings (thanks Anne at Book Buds!). Like all the Florian books I've read, the poems are fun, the colors bright, and the book is enjoyable.

Another book of space poems for the same age group is Blast Off: Poems About Space (I Can Read). Edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (1995), this is a collection of poems by various authors. The School Library Journal, in their review of this book at Amazon, is rather dismissive of the poems. But heck. Kids (I find, based on a sample size of 1) get such a charge out of POETRY, and being able to read it themselves. My sample also likes things that come in short bites, so poems work well. So what if, in a book like this, the rhymes are obvious. At least the rhymes here actually all work, and aren't forced annoyances, as they are in some more critically claimed children's poetry books. (Same goes for Florian's poems--they work well as early readers, with some help, and he knows how to rhyme).

Anyway, here's my favorite poem (which is vocabulary-wise perhaps the hardest in the book):

Blast Off! by Joanne Oppenheim

Wheelless
wingless
weightless
unknown roads in space await us.

All the poems in this book are available on line at this site

For older kids/grownups, a very funny book of space poems is The Space Child's Mother Goose, by Frederick Winson, illustrated by Marian Perry (1956, reprinted 2001). My mother handed it to me when I was 11 or so; I was much amused, and it educated me--this poem, for instance, added "postulate" to my vocabulary:

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.

Which seems, according to google, to have stuck in the heads of many other folks as well! (My mother, incidentally, continues to be a proselytizer for this book. A few years ago she met husband and wife physicists Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge and ended up sending them a copy, which they greatly enjoyed).

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Shaken & Stirred today! Enjoy!

For Poetry Friday: Memorizing Poetry

It is a dream of mine that by the time my boys are grown (14 or so years, on average), they will have memorized considerable amounts of poetry. My inspiration for this comes from Jean Kerr, a humorous essayist/commentator on family life (five boys and one girl) from the late 50s-early 70s. If you haven't read her, do!

In one essay, "The Poet and the Peasants" (anthologized in Penny Candy), she writes of her own efforts regarding the memorization of poetry by the young. "We have made mistakes with our children," she writes, "which will undoubtedly become clearer as they get old enough to write their own books. But here I would like to be serious for a few minutes about the one thing we did that was right. We taught them not to be afraid of poetry." (p 120).

It took great effort on the part of Kerr and her husband. On paper it seemed simple enough--every week the boys (girl not having yet been born) would memorize a poem, and on Sunday evenings they would recite them. The first week was a disaster: three bad limericks and one "lengthy and truly dreadful verse about a cookie-jar elf" (p 123). The second Sunday, featuring poems chosen by the parents, was also unsuccessful-- "the fact that the poems were of better quality and somewhat longer made the recitations even more agonizing, if that were possible" (p 126).

And here is where my admiration for Kerr and her husband really kicks in. They decided they would take an active role in the process: "One week he'd work on two of them while I worked on the other two (the following week we alternated so that the hostility engendered would be evenly divided." The parent would first read the poem, and ensure that the child actually understood it, not just the "meaning" but the words themselves. Then work on reading out loud was undertaken: "Two of the boys were very quick to grasp inflections; the other two were so slow that rehearsing them was like the Chinese Water Torture and I found myself wondering if there was some way to withdraw from the whole plan- with honor. What kept me resolute was the conviction I read in all those clear blue eyes that I would soon come to my senses, that this madness too would pass" (p 127).

But it worked. The boys memorized yards and yards of poetry, developing their own individual tastes--John, for instance, was "awfully good with people who died or were about to die, like dogs" (p 131). And in the end, it payed off, and the boys were ready with apt quotations for any occasion. A broken window one evening elicited this quote from Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold: "Come to the window, sweet is the night air."

So far, with no effort on the part of my husband or myself, my boys have memorized the last verse of Cargoes, by John Masefield, and also Douglas Florian's eminently memorable poem about the Monarch Butterfly (Omnibeasts, 2004), memorable chiefly for its last verse: "He is a Monarch, he is a Duke. Swallows that swallow him frequently puke.")

I wish that I had memorized more poetry myself; the number of poems that I have in their entirety can be numbered on one hand, and includes the Monarch Butterfly (although I also know scads of Mother Goose). Only twice in my life was I asked to memorize a poem for school--the first was a rather unexceptional poem about a hippo in second grade, the second Frost's Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening (perhaps the most memorized poem in the USA?) in seventh grade. I tried in high school to memorize poems on my own, but they didn't stick. I think it helps to start young. With Kerr as my guide, I hope to give my children the gift of a brain full of amusing, beautiful, thought-provoking, and quotable words. And I'm sure I'll get started just as soon as I find the time.

If anyone is curious, here is the poem about the hippo (author and punctuation unknown):

He has opened all his parcels,
But the largest and the last.
His hopes are at their highest,
And his heart is beating fast.
Oh happy Hippopotamus!
What lovely gift is here?
He cuts the string, the world stands still,
A pair of boots appear.

Oh little Hippopotamus,
The sorrows of the small.
He dropped two tears to mingle
With the flowing Senegal.
And the "thank you" that he uttered
Was the saddest ever heard,
In the Senegambian jungle,
From the mouths of beast or bird.

Not exactly a poem that will give me comfort or diversion in my decrepit old age...

If anyone is interested in reading Jean Kerr, here's a quick bibliography of her collected essays:

Please Don't Eat the Daisies 1957
The Snake has all the Lines 1960
How I got to be Perfect 1969
Penny Candy 1970

The Poetry Friday roundup is at The Simple and the Ordinary today.

Poetry Friday: A June Fish Poem

I had a carefully prepared little entry for today's poetry Friday, but it got eaten by the computer. So I fall back on a poem that amuses me, and which is Month-Appropriate.

A fish poem for June, by Rupert Brooke (The South Seas, 1913)

Heaven

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream or Pond,
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud!-Death eddies near-
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent and kind,
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
but more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.

The poetry Friday roundup is at Hip Writer Mama today.

For Poetry Friday--Waiting at the Window

The rainy weather today made me think of a favorite poem from Now We are Six, by AA Milne.

Waiting at the Window

there are my two drops of rain
Waiting on the wndow-pane.

I am waiting here to see
Which the winning one wll be.

Both of them have different names.
One is John and one is James.

All the best and all the worst
Comes from which of them is first.

James has just begun to ooze.
He's the one I want to loose.

John is waiting to begin.
He's the one I want to win.

James is going slowly on.
Something sort of sticks to John.

John is moving off at last.
James is going pretty fast.

John is rushing down the pane.
James is going slow again.

James has met a sort of smear.
John is getting very near.

Is he going fast enough?
(James has found a piece of fluff.)

John has hurried quickly by.
(James is talking to a fly.)

John is there, and John has won!
Look! I told you! Here's the sun!

Milne's poetry got short shrift in my mind when I was a child; I prefered to read Pooh. But even then there were poems that I enjoyed tremendously . The charming cat poem Pinkle Purr, for instance, and the powerful (I mean it) King John's Christmas. My favorite poem, however, is from When we Were Very Young. It's called Disobedience---it's the one about James James Morrision Morrison Weatherby George Dupree. If you haven't read it, do! It's too long to type here. And don't skip the introductions. Milne is a great essayist, who would doubtless have a wonderful blog if he were alive today.

The poetry round up is at Big A little A today.

For Poetry Friday: if Flower Fairies, why not Weed Fairies?

When I was young, a book I savoured was The Flower Fairy Alphabet, by Cicely Mary Barker. How happy I was that I was C for Columbine (shown at left, and about to bloom in my garden). The Alphabet was the only Flower Fairy book we had, but there are many others. The Cicely Mary Barker site isn't working, but there is an introduction to her here. CM Barker sure could draw flower fairies--and I find it rather wonderful how close the costumes are to the actual flowers. In fact, the illustrations are a good guide to common flowers of the (English, although many grow in America as well) garden. The books are widely available these days, doubtless delighting a fresh lot of little girls (I haven't yet introduced my boys to the flower fairies. Gender stereotypes are pretty powerful things).

A poem accompanies each picture. Sadly, CM Barker's poetry is not as good:

The Song of The Columbine Fairy

Who shall the chosen fairy be
For letter C?
There's Candytuft, and Cornflower blue,
Chrysanthemum so bold and fine,
And pretty dancing Columbine.

Yes, Columbine! The choice is she;
And with her, see,
An elfin piper, piping sweet
A little tune for those light feet
That dances, among the leaves and flowers
In someone's garden.(Is it ours?)

The coyness at the end especially makes me wince.

In homage to CM Barker, as I contemplate the state of my lawn, I have written the first poem of my own volume, Weed Fairies of the Spring.

Song of the Crabgrass Fairy

Nah nah, nah nah nah.

The Poetry Friday roundup is at HipWriterMama today.

For Poetry Friday- The Germ

We had one in our house this week--

The Germ, by Ogden Nash

A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

I found this poem in a rather nice anthology, Whisper and Shout--Poems to Memorize, edited by Patrice Vecchione. Some of the poems I knew already, others, like this one, were new to me. The poems here are divided into clusters--poems of family and friends, the natural world, wisdom and wonder, etc., which adds structure and provides food for thought. An anthology of poems is a lot like some else making for you a bag of mixed candy--they might put in coconut creams, instead of chocolate caramels. So having been provided with categories, it is fun to play the "what would I include game."

One thing I liked a lot about this book is that it is not illustrated. This book places great importance on the memorization of poems, something I think is wonderful. This week I am of the opinion that children should be free to imagine their own pictures, as an aid to memorization....

Two concrete poetry books

Sometimes it is much easier to be on the listening end than the reading end (especially if you can't read much yet). The dear boys (6 and 3) listened with rapt attention to the two books of poetry I read them last night, oohing and awing and laughing and pointing out details. My eyes got crosseder and crosseder as I tried to translate the shape-making words into coherency. The two books were



Sidman, Joyce. Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry. Illustrated by Michelle Berg. Houghton Mifflin, 2006





and


J. Patrick Lewis Doodle Dandies: Poems That Take Shape.Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. Simon & Schuster 1998









Both books are concrete poetry--words were used to make the shapes of the things being written about -- in Meow Ruff, for instance, clouds are white puffy word clumps (changing to gray), in Doodle Dandies, a lady walking her dachshund is holding a dachshund shaped word cluster on a leash. The kids eat this up, but it sure is hard on the reader, especially when the words are really close together...Meow Ruff especially took great concentration, so this is a bad bad book for the dim lighting and tired eyes of bedtime unless you have it memorized.

Of the two, I much preferred Meow Ruff, which tells the story of a kitten and dog who meet outside one day. They are enemies at first, but become friends when rain forces them to share the shelter of a picnic table. I like books with a coherent narrative and character development, which this book delivers as much as a picture book in snippets of unrhyming, descriptive verse can. The pictures are charming too. The words were fun to speak out loud -- the paved road, for instance, is "tramped on not lawn much trod bubble gum crack-filled Anthill hard flat welcome mat brick thick oil slick blown sand not land" (total aside--my older boy picked up at school that Queen song that goes "We will we will rock you... " and has been singing it incessantly which effected my reading of this. Sigh). In short, there were many engaging details in both picture and text, and the boys wanted to hear it over again immediately.

They didn't. We turned next to Doodle Dandies. This one was a tad disappointing. The only theme of the verses was that they made shapes (but not all of them were really good independent shapes--sometimes the words were stuck on top of existing pictures). It was somewhat disjointing to bounce from tigers and butterflies to baseballs and synchronized swimmers (although so few children's poems feature synchronized swimmers that perhaps some extra points are warranted). The good poem pictures were diverting (I liked the giraffe with legs made of "s t i l t s", but several left me cold. The illustrations are somewhat scattered as well, with realistic pictures of the natural world next to cartoonish images.

Not a patch on Douglas Florian, I say.

For more Joyce Sidman books of poetry, check out this post at Blue Rose Girls from last November with part 2 here. This was my first book of hers, the only one our library has, but this will change; even after going graphic book shop the Friends have some money left. (The booksales are worth it, I mutter to myself).

Poetry Friday: Bugle Song

Here's a poem that I think would make a great picture book (although the words are so visually evocative that maybe it doesn't need images). It is the Bugle Song, from Alfred Tennyson's The Princess (1847).


The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.


Tennyson was apparently a descendant of Edward I (according to Wikipedia), whose castles I posted about yesterday, which ties it all together nicely.

The Poetry Friday roundup today is at A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy.

ee cummings for Poetry Friday

Yesterday I posted a brief review of the video Sea Nasties. After a half hour or so of Leslie Nielsen's dark humor, the video ends on a completely different note, with Nielsen speaking, very movingly, this ee cummings poem:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,

and milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:

and may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Apart from my anxiety about poor molly, I think this is a lovely poem.

I had another Cummings quote in my head --"an instrument to measure Spring with," and looking for that on line I found this genuine article:

A 1613 pocket sundial from the Harvard Collection of Scientific Instruments, featured in the Harvard Magazine March April 2002 issue as part of an enthralling collection of Spring Miscellanies.

The Poetry Friday round-up is at Big A little a today.

Nonsense Snakes for Poetry Friday

I am still thinking about snakes in children's literature (see post below), and for poetry Friday I went looking for poems. I had a dim memory of Edward Lear writing "s was a silly snake" for one of his nonsense alphabets, but he doesn't seem to have done so. However, here is R for Rattlesnake:


R was a rattlesnake,
Rolled up so tight,
Those who saw him ran quickly,
For fear he should bite.
r!
Rattlesnake bite!

Here is another Edward Lear snake:


"The Scroobious Snake,who always wore a Hat on his Head, for fear he should bite anybody."

There is a lovely Edward Lear website here with a very handy index. I highly recommend his botanical nonsense.

For those who want more adult snake poems, here is a collection of snake poems with commentary...

The poetry Friday roundup is at Chicken Spaghetti this week

Naming of Parts

Note to reader: Despite the title, this poem has nothing to do with The Higher Power of Lucky, nor with any other children's book. It has to do with Spring and War. It was written by English poet Henry Reed in 1942.


NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

At the Henry Reed website there are links that clarify and illustrate the text. Up above is one type of Japonica, at left is another.
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Poems that would make great books #1- Cargoes

Here's a poem for mad March days that we like very much --Cargoes, by John Masefield. There's something about the emphatic downbeat, especially in the last verse, that has great appeal to my boys (perhaps because emphatic downbeats are such a natural part of their lives). And the words are magical. Even if you don't know, for instance, what exactly gold moidores are, it doesn't mater.

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Wouldn't this be a great picture book? I see each verse on its own page,with a lavish double page illustration, followed by a page, or several pages, of non-fiction gloss, explaining it all, with maps of trade routes and cut away pictures of the ships and explanations of the cargoes etc. etc.

John Masefield was also the author of two great children's books published in the 1930s-The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights. They are both stories of the magical adventures of orphaned Kay Harker as he tries to foil the evil intentions of a local coven of witches (one of whom is his governess, Sylvia Daisy Pouncer), find the great treasure his ancestor lost in The Midnight Folk and keep the Box of Delights from falling into their hands in the second book. There is a very charming cat featured, lots of action,talking pictures, mysterious journeys. How could one not warm to a book that opens with a mysterious stranger approaching on a snowy night, to tell you that "the Wolves are Running!" (first chapter of B. of D.). Sadly, they aren't in print anymore, but if your library has them, or you see a cheap copy, go for it!



Here's one cover for a paperback edition of The Midnight Folk.

Earthshake -- Poems from the Ground Up

We've been reading a lot of poetry in my house recently. There aren't enough parents around to read to each child individually in the evenings after we get home from work and school, what with having to feed them (and us) and provide them with a reasonably clean habitat. Poetry seems to be working well--more challenging for both (3 and 6 year old) than picture books, and holding the attention of 3 year old more firmly than chapter books. And when the poetry also lends itself to Teaching Moments, so much the better. Yesterday's find was Earthshake -- Poems from the Ground Up by Lisa Westberg Peters, illustrated by Cathie Fetstead (Greenwillow 2003). It was greatly enjoyed.

Being older and more cynical than my boys, which is the way it should be (?), I found the poems somewhat uneven, although all are interesting and lend themselves to Educational Discussions about geology, which is always a good thing. Here is my favorite poem:

The Yellowstone Whale

Deep beneath
the bubbling pools
lives a big whale.

When it breaths,
we snap pictures
of its spout.

When it flicks its tail,
the ground shakes
beneath our feet.

Stay down deep
whale.
Stay down.

I liked this image very much.

Douglas Florian and Ted Hughes

The animal poems of Douglas Florian are funny on purpose--many are written with a punchline in mind. For example, The Walrus (p. 63 of Omnibeasts, 2004):

The pounding spatter
Of salty sea
Makes the Walrus
Walrusty.

And one says Ha ha and moves on (which isn't to say I don't like his work--see below).

A similar package of poems accompanied by drawings is The Mermaid's Purse, by Ted Hughes, illustrated by Flora McDonnelll (Knopf Young Readers, 2000). Hughes' poems, however, are much richer in metaphor, and are much more likely to sink deep into the mind and stew poetically there. I myself am a big fan of metaphors, and get a kick out of throwing them, as it were, at my own children. I'd quote one of the poems, but don't have the book with me...

I haven't seen the anthology of Hughes poems "Collected Poems for Children," which came out in 2005. I am curious to see which the editors found most Child Appropriate, and if this matches the choices my children would make.