On walking my daughter to school this week, we went past this bare branched tree with a pink mitten on it. “Oh look!” I said, pointing it out to my daughter. “Yes,” she said excitedly, “it looks like a pink rose, Mommy!” Taking this response as an opportunity to teach her about poetics, I replied, “Yes, it does look like a rose. Do you know when you compare an object to another using the word ‘like,’ you are using what is called a simile?” I went on further. The pink mitten looks like a rose, so you are right to say that, but you can also say ‘The pink mitten is a rose.’ That would be using what is called a metaphor.” My daughter paused in her tracks, squinted at me hard and said, “But the mitten isn’t a rose, Mommy.” Ah, yes, perhaps the metaphor was a little too hard for her to grasp quite yet.
Thinking about poetics is part of my job as a creative writing teacher, so I was very glad that day when my daughter’s teacher lent me the book called Inner Chimes: Poems on Poetry, selected by Bobbye S. Goldstein with illustrations by Jane Breskin Zalben. (Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 1992). Inner Chimes contains poems about writing poetry. Here’s an excerpt of a poem by Eleanor Farjeon that reminded me very much of my daughter’s poetic encounter with the pink mitten rose:
What is Poetry? Who knows?
Not a rose, but the scent of a rose;
Not the sky, but the light in the sky;
Not the fly, but the gleam of the fly
Not the sea, but the sound of the sea
Not a pink mitten, but a pink mitten rose, I’d somehow like to add! When I paused later in the day to take a picture of the pink mitten, my daughter put her green gloved hand over it and said, “And now it’s coming out of its bud — take a picture, Mommy!” Well, despite her initial confusion over metaphor, she certainly picked up the notion of the extended metaphor pretty quick!
If you’d like to read more poems for kids about writing poetry, I’d certainly recommend Inner Chimes. There are some thoughtful poems about the creative process and inspiration in this book.
This week Poetry Friday is hosted by Tricia at the Miss Rumphuis Effect.