Category: Reading Poetry

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Falling for Poetry—It’s as Easy as Loving Pajamas and These 10 Kids Books!

Pajama Girl by Kelle Sauer

“Mama?” Jane holds a book in her hand. “Will you read the llama poem?”

“Sure, sweetie.” I shove back my dinner plate to clear a space on the table. She climbs into my lap and opens the book to the llama poem page.

“The Llama Who Had No Pajama, ” I read the title, then launch into the poem.

The llama who had no pajama
Was troubled and terribly sad
When it became known that he had outgrown
Every pair of pajamas he had.

The poem continues, picking up speed as the llama and his mama look in “each nook and each cranny / each hillock and mound” and not a pair of pajamas can they find in the whole wide wumberly world. By this time, they’re so exhausted from their search, the little llama falls asleep sans pajamas, only to wake up in the morning and realize:

Since goats don’t wear gloves
And cocks don’t wear socks
And bats don’t wear hats,
Well, why in the world,
In the wumberly world,
Should llamas be wearing pajamas?

“Will you read it again, Mama?” Jane asks. So I do. This time, Jack leans over my shoulder to read and listen along, and the twins crowd on either side, resting their little blond heads on my hips.

I confess, until I had children, poetry intimidated me. I was an English major who always felt incredibly dense when I approached a poem, as if its meaning were somehow obscured by its language, and it was my job to decode it, only I didn’t know the code that my classmates had somehow managed to crack, and I just bumbled along, feeling ever more and more stupid at poetry. Once I graduated, I more or less quit reading the stuff.

Then, Jack was born, and I started reading children’s books, many of which are poems: Goodnight Moon and Ten, Nine, Eight. Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? and Owl Moon. Jamberry and The Circle of Days. And I liked them. I loved them. I read them over and over again. I still do.

Then Jack and I graduated to Mother Goose and Jack Prelutsky and Edward Lear—whole books full of verses, of poems. We giggled over them, and I reveled in the sound of the words in my ears, the feel of them on my tongue. By this time, Jane was born, and I read to her all the books I’d read to Jack. Then the three of us discovered Mary Ann Hoberman and Rachel Field and Robert Louis Stevenson and the poems of A.A. Milne.

And somewhere along the way, I discovered that even though real poetry still intimidated me, I definitely liked children’s poetry.

Then we began reading from Favorite Poems Old and New, a book I stole from my mother’s library when I was home for a visit, and I found myself reading poems by Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson—poets whom no one would accuse of writing for children. And I loved the feel and sound of these words just as much as I loved the feel and sound of the children’s poems on which I’d cut my poetic teeth.

I could no longer claim that I wasn’t really a poetry person. Reading to my kids, I fell for poetry myself. Now, there are still poems that mystify me, that I read and wonder, what the heck is that about? But I no longer feel stupid in the face of them. I just figure that poem wasn’t written for me and go read something else, something by Mary Oliver or Billy Collins or John Keats.

I finish reading “The Llama Who Had No Pajama” a second time. Jane flips to another page and asks me to read the poems there. We spend half an hour turning pages, looking at the funny illustrations, and reading poetry. The kids could keep going—they’d have me read every poem in the book—but my backside is getting sore from sitting on hard wood under a six-year-old who seems to get heavier by the minute.

So we get up and clear the table. While I load the dishwasher, Jack and Jane get ready for bed. Then they help me put the twins in their pajamas. “Our own little llamas, ” I say.

“In fleecy pajamas, ” Jack says. He and Jane and I grin at each other. Then we pile onto the sofa for stories—and more poetry.

*****

If you’re like me and don’t know how to introduce a youngster to poetry, start with picture books, many of which are poems in disguise. In addition, look for illustrated books written by well-known poets. Some of our favorite children’s poetry books include illustrated versions of poetry by Donald Hall, Edward Lear, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, Rachel Field, Rose Fyleman, and Mary Ann Hoberman (author of “The Llama Who Had No Pajama”).

Once they (and you) are used to the language of poetry, you could try a longer collection of poetry. Here are a few of our family’s favorites:

Children’s poetry for the very young:

My Very First Mother Goose edited by Iona Opie, illustrated by Rosemary Wells

Sylvia Long’s Mother Goose selected and illustrated by Sylvia Long

Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young selected by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Marc Brown

Animal Crackers: A Delectable Collection of Pictures, Poems, and Lullabies for the Very Young collected and illustrated by Jane Dyer

Children’s poetry for preschoolers on up:

The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Betty Fraser

Talking Like the Rain: A Read-to-Me Book of Poems selected by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy, illustrated by Jane Dyer

Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart selected by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Michael Emberley

Poetry Speaks to Children (Book & CD) edited by Elise Paschen, illustrated by Judy Love, Wendy Rasmussen, and Paula Zinngrabe Wendland

Poetry Speaks to Children (Book & CD) selected by Helen Ferris, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard

Early to Late Elementary School:

Poetry for Young People series. Illustrated collections of American and British poets.

A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children, selected by Caroline Kennedy. The Kennedy family’s favorite poems. Illustrated by Jon J. Muth.

Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Poetry and Color. Mary O’Neill. Beautifully illustrated by John Wallner.

Hip Hop Speaks to Children with CD: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat, Nikki Giovanni. Illustrated by Alicia Vergel de Dios, Damian Ward, Kristen Balouch, Jeremy Tugeau, Michele Noiset.

Photo by Kelle Sauer. This post is a reprint of a post by Kimberlee Conway Ireton that first appeared at Tweetspeak Poetry.

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Poetry Hearts at the Table

I bought milk in a glass jug—a charming, thick jug with no label except for the cap. The jug brought a comforting heftiness I felt when carrying it back to the fridge, a friendly clink and rattle when I twirled the cap back on.

“We should keep this jug after the milk’s gone,” my daughter Hadley said, scooping up the last of her Rice Chex, then lifting the bowl with both hands to slurp the rest of the milk.

I agreed. We needed to keep this jug.

“But what will we do with it?” my other daughter Harper asked. I told her I wasn’t sure, but something this delightful couldn’t be recycled just yet.

It was December when I rinsed the jug and placed it in the dishwasher; once it was clean and dry I placed it on a bookshelf, waiting for what would happen next.

The beginning of a new year is supposed to be an inspiring time for resolutions, goals, and intentions. But, to be frank, the newness I feel at this juncture is more stark, raw, like a tree branch that’s lost all its leaves. I don’t mind this feeling. I believe rebirth and growth will happen, but I’d like to spend a bit of time in the bareness of a new year.

So one afternoon, I took a walk around our backyard looking for sticks without leaves. I decided to fill the jug with fallen branches—a reminder that it’s okay to sit in the empty newness, enjoy its crispness, its vacancy, its silence.

The jug sat on our kitchen table holding the branches. The table is old and small, one my husband Jesse and I got 18 years ago. We’ve had Thanksgiving dinners on this table and lazy Sunday morning breakfasts. I wrote my first published essay on this table. It’s dented with marks from my pen, our daughters’ first attempts at scratching out letters on paper, accidental scrapes from a knife or fork.

One Friday long ago, Jesse had come home from work with a hankering to try a DIY project. “I’ll weather our table,” he said. He turned it on its side and rolled it to our balcony of the third floor condominium we were living in. All weekend he worked, sanding it and painting it white then sanding it again. It was a beautiful table before, but I love it more now because of what he turned it into. We can see the dents more clearly now, and there is fluorescent pink paint that won’t come off from an art project one of our daughters pursued on a rainy day. I am thankful for what this table shows, what it has held, and what it’s turned into.

Now the milk jug was holding bare branches at the edge of the table next to a window.

Making the Poetry Hearts

Making Poetry Hearts with Astonishments

1 • Choosing a line to copy

The last week of January had me thinking about making paper hearts and hanging them on the branches. The girls and I drew hearts with pink markers on computer paper. Harper’s art teacher taught her how to Zentangle, a phrase I think is fun just to say, but it’s equally fun to practice.

Harper showed Hadley and me how to fill up a space with a design, and as we worked, we did some talking. We discussed recess and soccer, art, and books, boys and friends, Maryland and Michigan, all while we tangled designs into our hearts. We slipped string through a punched hole, tied a knot, and hung about ten hearts from the bare branches.

The next morning, I pulled a stack of books from our shelves and told the girls I thought it would be fun to write phrases we liked on the back of the hearts. I showed them my Anna Kamienska poetry book, Astonishments, running my finger under lines I liked.

Hadley liked “Gratitude is a scattered/homeless love,” and wrote that on a heart. I think scattered is the sound the dead leaves make when the winter wind blows, freezing the leaves back into the earth, sinking them into something new.

Finished Poetry Heart

2 • Write It on Your Heart

Harper liked “I believe that radiance/spreads splendidly/on all things,” and wrote the words around the perimeter of her heart.

I said that the word radiance makes me feel warm as I spread cream cheese in thick swaths over our bagels.

“Mommy! Look out the window!” Harper stood, holding her Bear with one arm and pointing with the other. Hadley and I looked, and right away we knew what she was excited about—it was well before 8 a.m., and the sky was a fiery orange blasting away the dark and leading the sky to blue.

Poetry Hearts in Glass Jug

3 • Hearts Filled and Arranged

Featured photo by Kelle Sauer. This post is a reprint of a post by Calie Feyen that first appeared at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

 

 

 

 

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Reading Poems is Good “Mom Medicine”—Especially When the Kids Are Marching

 

The other night, I took Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems and a glass of my favorite drink upstairs to the bathtub while my kids hung out in the family room with their dad. I call this combo my “mom medicine.”

I started off with some of Bishop’s well-known pieces, like “Filling Station,” “The Armadillo,” and “One Art,” inhaling some of the beautiful, witty lines I hadn’t visited since college. Then I flipped back to a section titled, “Poems Written in Youth ”– poems, according to the volume’s Publisher’s Note, that Bishop “would not have reprinted. . .for she was too severe a critic of her own work.”

Of course, that note made me want to read them all the more.

I began to recite some of the lines Bishop wrote when she was a teenager (still exquisite, of course). Then the marching began.

Two weeks ago, I had taken my middle schooler to see Mockingjay, Part 1. At one point in the movie, Katniss, the main character played by Jennifer Lawrence, sings the haunting “The Hanging Tree.” My daughter sat transfixed. And she wasn’t alone. The song quickly moved up the charts upon the movie’s release.

That night, my daughter taught the song to her younger sister, and now, to my annoyance, the two were singing the dirge-like tune quite aggressively, marching throughout the house. Their pounding feet sent waves through my bathwater.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
They strung up a man
They say who murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out
For his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

And so forth, for several more stanzas. It is a disturbingly beautiful song, but now I wanted to keep reading the Bishop poem open before me:

To a Tree

Oh, tree outside my window, we are kin,
For you ask nothing of a friend but this:
To lean against the window and peer in
And watch me move about! Sufficient bliss

For me, who stand behind its framework stout,
Full of my tiny tragedies and grotesque grieves,
To lean against the window and peer out,
Admiring infinites’mal leaves.

Of course. I was getting distracted reading a young girl’s poem about a tree because my two young girls were marching and singing about a tree.

But then the connections began to hit me. One scene is haunting and one comforting; however, both capture the intimacy and mystery of our relationships with trees–how the young are drawn to them irresistibly as places to love, grieve, and imagine. As places to find oneself or lose oneself. Trees are our mirror selves of growth, change, and loss, limb by swaying limb.

I won’t get into any mystical theories about how or why these poetic connections happen, but they seem to happen for me all the time. Most people would probably say they are coincidences. Fine. I can accept that. But even with coincidences, why not have a little fun?

Pick up a book of poems, and start reading them aloud. Don’t read with a goal to “get” the poems. Enjoy the sounds and images and see how they touch on the events, experiences, and feelings in your own life. Write these connections in the margins. They may change tomorrow or the next day. No matter. See how the poems speak to and reinforce your day now. These connections will make the poems more real. And perhaps your life.

Reading poetry. Strange things do happen here. And that is sufficient bliss for me.

This post is a modified reprint of a post by Tania Runyan that first appeared at How to Read a Poem. Photo by Kelle Sauer.

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3 Tricky Ways to Become a Mom on More Poetry

Poetry makes you a better writer, a better reader, and it fills a space in your life that nothing else can in quite the same way that poetry does.

I know this. But I’ve often struggled with formulating a good poetry reading plan. I’ve watched stacks of poetry collections teeter on my nightstand. I’ve stood frozen in bliss/terror at the hundreds of colorful volumes in independent bookstores. I’ve even struggled with the guilt of not having read “enough” of the classics.

For this school year, however, I’ve developed a plan, and it’s one you can easily adopt for yourself if you wish. These three cool tips for bolstering your poetry reading can provide you with some structure, a sense of accomplishment and, above all, the wonder and beauty of hundreds of new poems in your life.

1) Go all-out fangirl, with one classic poet per season.

Carolyn Forche, a wonderful poet whose works include the haunting collection The Country Between Us and the anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, suggests choosing one pre-WWII poet per season and immersing yourself in his or her work.

You can also absorb any other information you’re able to find, such as letters, biographies, and interviews. She suggests keeping these materials at your bedside or favorite chair–wherever you normally do your reading–and picking up the work whenever you can.

This approach has been liberating for me. At the end of the summer, my nightstand and bedroom floor were piled with books. Many people welcome this “problem,” but for me, the image was a daily reminder of the time I lacked, even a source of guilt.

So I took the books down to the basement office, shelved the ones I suspected I wouldn’t get to for awhile and built a “to-read” stack that would remain safely out of my daily line of vision.

Then I ordered Wallace Stevens: The Collected Poems.

While studying creative writing as an undergraduate, I read a number of the famous Stevens poems, such as “Anecdote of the Jar,” “The Emporer of Ice Cream,” and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

In my book How to Read a Poem, I feature one of his earlier poems, “The Snow Man,” as an example of expert imagery. But I’ve always known I had so much more to learn from Stevens. Personally, I’ve been interested in this insurance executive/poet because, like me, he lives an “atypical” poet’s life.

These days, I keep just one thick book on my nightstand. I take a few moments each night to enter the mysterious rooms of these Stevens poems, savoring lines like “But on the first-found weed/She scuds the glitters” or “Fill your black hull/With white moonlight.”

Even if I don’t really “get” the poem (one reason, I believe, I avoided Stevens for so long), I allow the light to shine through and the words to hum until I feel the poem in my bones.

2) Remodel your bathroom–with poetry

Forche also recommends staying in tune with contemporary poetry by always keeping a current volume in one of those other popular reading spots, the bathroom. The choices are endless. Where do you begin?

Word of mouth is always my favorite way to pick up ideas for new collections of poetry. When I start to recognize a fresh poet’s name from Facebook or Twitter, I pay attention. Reviews from Tweetspeak Poetry or The Poetry Foundation also abound with interesting titles.

Sometimes, the best approach is to just pick a book you’ve never heard of from the poetry shelf at your library or local bookstore. That’s how I discovered Li-Young Lee and Sharon Olds as a college student–I closed my eyes and picked.

For a couple of weeks now, I’ve had Andrew Hudgins’s selected poems, American Rendering, in my upstairs bathroom. In fact, it was the first book I grabbed from that basement “to-read” pile. I’ve always enjoyed his work, including Tree, which I use to teach line breaks in How to Write a Poem. This book includes many of his best poems from six volumes that cover a twenty-five year period. His voice is fresh, dark, and funny, but I often get through just one stanza at a time.

“If you can’t finish a slim volume of poetry per week,” Forche says, “you’re not spending enough time in the bathroom.”

Duly noted.

3) Get poetic, by email

You can subscribe to a poetry delivery service that sends daily poems to your inbox. I suggest Every Day Poems, sponsored by Tweetspeak Poetry. Poets and editors lovingly curate a variety of classic and contemporary poems paired with beautiful artwork, exploring a monthly theme.

Consider the daily poem as important as any of your other emails and take a few minutes to breathe and read (and find a little inbox mom peace!). With 260 weekdays in the year, you will have read the equivalent of several more books of poetry.

 

Photo by Kelle Sauer. This is a modified reprint of an article by Tania Runyan that first ran on How to Read a Poem.