Finish National Poetry Month with a Book of Poems

In the first grade, I read Jack Prelutsky’s A Pizza the Size of the Sun. It changed the way I looked at words and at reading. If I could read one page of poetry, I could read two. I came to love reading first by loving poetry.

In my six-year-old mind, the rhymes were funny, the stories they told made absolutely no sense, and I wanted more of them. In these kinds of stories, pizzas could be as large as the sun. You could fall UP instead of down in Shel Silverstein’s book of poetry, Falling Up. What did I learn as a six-year-old reading poetry? The rules of the universe didn’t apply in poems.

Much later I learned that poems did reflect the real world, sometimes in flowery Shakespearean sonnets, and other times in quick stanzas of reality as in William Carlos Williams’ poems, i.e. “This Is Just To Say.”

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

We introduce words and language to children in rhymes. All of Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes are poetry. The children’s books that stick in our brains long past our childhood—they all rhyme! Madeline, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Green Eggs and Ham, and the list continues.

So I encourage those among you who may not enjoy reading poetry for yourself to pick up a poem and read it out loud to your child this last week of National Poetry Month. I promise, if the poem is funny, if there are accompanying illustrations, then anything is possible! You may end up reading two or three.

As Shel Silverstein says in his poem “Listen to the Mustn’ts” from Where the Sidewalk Ends:

Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
      Listen to the DON'TS
      Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WONT'S
      Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
      Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

Other Great Books of Poetry for Children:

The Maine Coon’s Haiku by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Lee White

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Tasha Tudor

Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer

A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children by Caroline Kennedy, Paintings by Jon J Muth

Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold by Joyce Sidman & Rick Allen

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Julie Morstad

What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About? by Judith Viorst

Little Poems for Tiny Ears Poems by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Tomie dePaola 

Permission to Play

William Carlos Williams’ ability both to run a full-time medical practice and also to devote daily time to his writing is one of the things I admire most about him. The other, of course, is the quality of his writing, his ability to see and describe the exquisite details in everyday things. The movements of a bird outside his window, the taste of a sweet plum from the icebox, the clangs, siren, howls and rumbling wheels of a red fire truck. When I read A River of Words, I realized that those two characteristics—his talent for balancing work and creativity, and also for noticing and describing his experience—probably both stem from the many hours he spent walking beside the banks of the Passaic River.

During my first year of teaching elementary school in New York City in the late 1980s, I was shocked to learn about “play dates.” Parents called each other to schedule a “date” for their children to play together. I guess that makes sense, I thought. New York is a big city and you have to plan for transportation, and you certainly have to know where your child is. But I thought of my own carefree afternoons growing up in Dearborn (and later Kalamazoo), Michigan. Our neighborhood was much like the setting in Gran Torino, little lots close together—you could practically call out the window and get a game of kickball together. A bunch of us would walk back from school together at age 6 and 7, maybe stop home to change clothes and grab a snack, but then we’d meet in the front yard with our bikes or bats and balls. The afternoons seemed to stretch delightfully endlessly to dinnertime. There was a spontaneity to our play that seems harder to tap into today.

Many of my friends have preserved that for their children. But they’ve had to work at not scheduling their children's time too tightly, allowing them room to play in the yard or go to the neighborhood park. They’ve had to limit the lessons and practices and time in front of the TV or computer. Even as adults it’s sometimes hard to give ourselves permission to “procrastinate now,” as Ellen DeGeneres advises. My friend Elmera often says, “I constantly have to remind myself that I’m a human being, not a human doing.”

William Carlos Williams, by his example, shows us there’s room for both doing and being.