Then blow, Winds, blow!
And rave and shriek,
And snarl and snow
Till your breath grows weak–
While here in my room
I’m as snugly shut
As a glad little worm
In the heart of a nut!
This is the last part of a poem, Winter Fancies, by James Whitcomb Riley. I am a little afraid to admit this because I fear we still have some cold weather here yet to come, but I kind of miss that “snugly shut in” feeling this year. There is something to be said for hearing and seeing the world outside all in a blur of snow and cold and wind only to be warm and snug inside. After we read this poem I sent the kids out to play, two were bare foot with no jackets (the girls, of course) and Gabe donned a light jacket. Just a little glimpse of what the weather is like right now and has been for the majority of this winter. Very mild.
It has taken me about a year and a half to finally get used to reading AND enjoying poetry with the kids. I wasn’t exposed to it much growing up and I always thought it a chore to figure out what the author was trying to express. Children’s poetry is a little bit easier than say, Emily Dickenson, but if we still don’t know what is being said, I am glad for the exposure to both of us and am, at the very least, pleased if I get the rhythm and intonations right.
Currently we are reading the works of the aforementioned author and Eugene Field. The one we read today by Eugene Field was Our Whippings. We all giggled when we read how the boys faked it when Mother gave the whippings. I’ll leave you to your imagination to what the rest was about or you could just go ahead and look it up.
Happy poetry reading!
Marcy
February 17, 2012 at 9:10 pm
Poetry… sometimes I like writing it, and I have a few favorites for reading, but in general I’ve steered away from books of poetry, too. I do like silly poetry, though, like the one I had when little that I just bought for Amy recently — the first poem is “As I was standing in the street as quiet as can be, a great big ugly man came up and tied his horse to me,” and the title of the book is the second half of that poem. My other favorite from this book is “I eat my peas with honey; I’ve done it all my life. They do taste kind of funny, but it keeps them on the knife.”
That Field poem about the whippings — not sure what I think about that. I guess I can see how growing up with whippings you’d have some camaraderie with siblings about what you suffered and what you got away with, and when administered by an obviously loving parent, you might even have some appreciation for their motivation in whipping — and yet, well, I am increasingly uncomfortable with even “proper” spanking, and am fairly persuaded that people grow up to be fine not because of spanking but in spite of it, and that while firm limits are necessary, there are other and better ways of setting and enforcing those limits.