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It was a slightly sticky week reading-wise for my 7 year old son--he just didn't want to read any of the chapter books I offered him. So I turned to poetry, specifically the animal poems of Douglas Florian, with the happy result that he read.

Poems are more friendly to read than the densely filled pages of chapter books--less intimidating visually, and once you've read a poem, you have clearly accomplished something. Florian's poems in particular, I think, are great for the reluctant reader. They are funny. They are informative. They have a fairly straightforward vocabulary. And I like his whimsically varied illustrations.

Here are a few poems that struck my fancy:

The Cheetah (from bow wow meow meow it's rhyming cats and dogs, 2003, Harcourt)

The cheetah is fleet.
The cheetah is fast.
Its four furry feet
Have already passed.

The Dachshund (also from bow wow meow meow)

Short up front
And short behind
But so long in-between.
The fleas all ride
Upon my side
In my s t r e t c h limousine.

The Diamondback Rattlesnake (from lizards, frogs, and polliwogs, 2001, Harcourt)

Fork in front,
Rattle behind.
The lump in the middle?
Don't pay any mind.

Scales up high,
Scales down low.
The lump in the middle?
You don't want to know.

Diamonds above,
Diamonds below.
The lump in the middle?
A rabbit too slow.

All three of these are pretty easy, quick, and funny to read--great confidence boosters.

My son also decided to bring home from the library Shel Silverstein's Falling Up --apparently the boy who is the Alpha Reader in my son's class has been reading it (having finished Eragon Harry Potter Cornelia Funke etc). Silverstein's poems, thought, aren't as uniformly easy readerish as Florian's; likewise Jack Prelutsky.

Any recommendations for other poets or books we could look for that still unfluent reader who likes science might be able to read easily?

And as a total aside, Shel Silverstein has a new edition of an old out of print book coming out this March-- Don't Bump the Glump which looks rather interesting.

The Poetry Friday round up is at Karen Edmisten's place today!

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I have been fond of imagist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) ever since I ended up at the same college (Bryn Mawr) as she did, was very taken by her picture, and decided on reading some of her poems that our minds worked much the same way (in the way that one does, when one is young and at college. I am now pretty sure our minds don't, although I still like her poetry).

What I did not know, until today, wandering around on line hoping to be inspired for Poetry Friday, is that H.D. also wrote children's stories, before committing herself to poetry. Two of them are available on line, here. I think she made the right choice. Here's one of my favorite poems:

Sheltered Garden, from Sea Garden (1916)

I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.

Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest --
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.

I have had enough --
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch --
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent--
only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light --
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?

Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit --
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
with a russet coat.

Or the melon --
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste --
it is better to taste of frost --
the exquisite frost --
than of wadding and of dead grass.

For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves --
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince --
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.

O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.

- H.D.

Poetry Friday is at Mentor Texts today!

P.S. The internet is truly amazing. I did not know that H.D. stared in a movie with Paul Robeson in 1930 (courtesy of Wikipedia)

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"Oh, he walked around the world on his four fur feet,
his four fur feet, his four fur feet.
And he walked around the world on his four fur feet,
and never made a sound-O."

So begins Four Fur Feet, by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Remy Charlip (1990, Hopscotch Books). The walk around the world take a black pawed creature (the four fur feet are all we ever see) through cities, by rivers filled with boats and streams filled with fish, past a railroad yard, and through a countryside full of all kinds of animals. At last the black beast reaches a meadow, where he lies down to dry his paws (they'd gotten wet crossing the stream).

"And the sun shone down on his four fur feet,
his four fur feet, his four fur feet.
And the sun shone down on his four fur feet
and made them feel all warm-O."

As the creature moves around the world, the reader has to move the book around too, until at one point it's upside down. All part of the fun.

To my mind, the illustrations don't invite a great deal of interested looking--they are made of lots of ink lines, sometimes with individual shapes colored in, as on the cover, sometimes just drawn on a solid color background. But since the book itself is (literally) moving, it might be for the best that the pictures aren't such eye-candy that the young read-ee wants to keep the reader's arm from turning.

And it is the words, the swing and rhythm of them (that Margaret Wise Brown at her best has such a good ear for), which make this book great fun. Although it is "four fur feet" that really makes it--this verse dosen't have them, and suffers as a result:

"And as he slept, he dreamed a dream,
dreamed a dream, dreamed a dream.
And as he slept, he dreamed a dream
that all the world was round-O."

This book has practical utility, in that the poem can be adapted to those situations where you are trying to get your four year old child to move. Here's an example from last night:

Oh he walked to his bed on his four fur feet,
his four fur feet, his four fur feet,
Oh he walked to his bed on his four fur feet,
and didn't get up till the morning! (ha ha)

Or you can walk up the stairs, to the car, to the door, etc. It is interesting and effective at the moment (two days after reading), but I'm not sure how long it will last. (Fast forward ten years: Oh he took out the trash on his four fur feet...)

On the right is the 1994 edition of the same story, illustrated by W.H. Marx. I much prefere the earlier one, with its very mysterious creature. Leaving the creature to the imagination of the reader makes it much more interesting. You can draw a set of four fur feet for everyone:



And then they can draw their own creature, like so:


More creaures (including mine) will be added later--I forgot to bring them with me to scan.

And finally, back to the poetry part of it all, there's a lesson plan up on the web here on how to use this book to explain alliteration to young kids.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is here at the Farm School today!

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Here's a poem I love that always comes to mind this time of year. I love it for the utter beauty of the pictures the words make...

I am having trouble formating it as the poet intended, so please take a look at it here, because the formating really does matter. But here it is anyway, without the indentations:

Epistle To Be Left In The Earth

by Archibald MacLeish

...It is colder now,
there are many stars,
we are drifting
North by the Great Bear,
the leaves are falling
The water is stone in the scooped rocks,
to southward
Red sun grey air:
the crows are
Slow on their crooked wings,
the jays have left us:
Long since we passed the flares of Orion.
Each man believes in his heart he will die.
Many have written last thoughts and last letters.
None know if our deaths are now or forever:
None know if this wandering earth will be found.

We lie down and the snow covers our garments.
I pray you,
you (if any open this writing)
Make in your mouths the words that were our names.
I will tell you all we have learned,
I will tell you everything:
The earth is round,
there are springs under the orchards,
The loam cuts with a blunt knife,
beware of
Elms in thunder,
the lights in the sky are stars --
We think they do not see,
we think also
The trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us:
The birds too are ignorant.
Do not listen.
Do not stand at dark in the open windows.
We before you have heard this:
they are voices:
They are not words at all but the wind rising.
Also none among us has seen God
(... We have thought often
the flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
pointed to one tree but it was not so.)
As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous:
The wind changes at night and the dreams come.

It is very cold,
there are strange stars near Arcturus,

Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

And as usual I am left wondering what the dreams and voices out there are, and I tell myself that Macleish is offering a bit of hope at the end of his narrator's denial of anything Beyond.

And as usual I wonder if "we are drifting" nowhere in particular, or if "we are drifting north by the Great Bear" and if it makes a difference. Probably the former, but the later is how I read it first, and it stuck.

NB: I present the poem as punctuated and laid out (well actually I am still working on this part, grrrr. 10 minutes later-- I am giving up--HOW DOES ONE GET BLOGGER TO ACCEPT THE FACT THAT ONE REALLY WANTS SPACES EVERYTIME ONE TYPES THE SPACE BAR???? Is there html code for this?) in The New Oxford Book of American Verse --there really is no final period. Which I think makes a difference...

Poetry Friday is being hosted at Susan Writes today--thanks Susan!

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In honor of the upcoming Carnival of Children's Literature--Take A Ride on the Reading Railroad! (please see the post just before this one to hop on board) I have train poems today for Poetry Friday.

Here's an old favorite:

Travel, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (from Second April, 1921)

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

Here's another I like, by Edward Thomas

Adlestrop

Yes, I remember Adlestrop--
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Aldestrop actually looks like a place I'd like to go.

Here's a new one that tickles me, from a webpage of collected Train Haiku etc

on the train
my usual thoughts
about derailment

- John Stevenson (who I think is this John Stevenson.

And finally, here's a link to one of the more famous train poems, the Night Mail, by WH Auden--
"This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order"

And now I have that wretched Thomas the Tank Engine song in my head-- "hear the sound of the night train, the clickety clack of the night train..." Speaking of Thomas, there's a list at Amazon called "Beyond Thomas: Train Fiction and Poetry for Young Children." There's some good stuff on it.

There is also lots of good stuff at the Poetry Friday Roundup today, hosted by Sara at Read Write Believe.

ps: One more family favorite train poem, by Scotland's inimitable poet, William McGonagall.

Here's the opening of The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

The bridge collapsed in 1879, not long after McGonagall had written a poem in its praise. Here's a link to the full text of this truly memorable poem.

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My older boy has an enlightened second grade teacher--instead of set assignments, they have homework choices each week, and one of these is always the memorization of a poem. Here's the poem all of us ended up memorizing this past week:

The Shell, by Ted Hughes

The sea fills my ear
with sand and with fear.

You may wash out the sand,
but never the sound
of the ghost of the sea
that is haunting me.

This poem is anthologized in The Mermaid's Purse, by Ted Hughes, illustrated by Flora McDonnell (2000). I looked at it with some suspicion when my husband brought it home (associating Ted Hughes, in my ignorance, with suicide and darkness), but now I think it is a lovely book. Ostensibly it's for children 4-8, but to heck with that. I think that with poems such as this, the older you get the more meanings you can see.

In this case, we talked about what "the ghost of the sea" might mean. The children do not yet (I think) have much experience with regret, loss, and the cruel relentless inexorable erosion of the coast of life by the passage of years (ha ha), although they are aware of global warming and we are all glad we live on high ground. Nor do they truly realize that even though we live within 45 minutes of beaches we didn't go once this summer (although there's still tomorrow) and therefore they have Bad Parents (but I really hate sand in my shoes). So the ghost of the sea might not have as many layers of meaning for them as it does for me, but they will come. And in the meantime, the children still like the poem.

For more about Ted Hughes, here's a review of his collected poems from Kelly at Big A littl a.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at here at Hipwritermama today!

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