The Magical Chemistry of Poetry and Children

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Colored pencil by Colleen Smith.

Do you like poetry? Do you like children? If you’ve never combined poetry with children, you don’t know what you’re missing.¹

It’s easiest to start young, before their wide-eyed, easily overawed brains have been exposed to the serotonin highs induced by electronics.

Barring that, if you’ve allowed too many years to slip by between birth and the introduction of the poem, you can always choose a funny or shocking poem. One about “Homework!” by Jack Prelutsky might do the trick.²

Homework! Oh, Homework! I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you away in the sink,
if only a bomb would explode you to bits.
Homework! Oh, homework! You’re giving me fits.

But if you get them early, you can start with short poems, storytelling poems, or even nursery rhymes will do.

Photo of my now 14-year-old flipping through “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”. Illustrated by Annie Kubler.

The goal is to have fun with them. Pretend to, “Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream,” together. Row away from the roaring lions! “If you see a crocodile, don’t forget to scream!” and hop out on the shore to escape them! The adventure is yours to dream up!

My younger daughter’s scroll illustration of the “Walrus and the Carpenter”, which she made after I read her a draft of this post.

Imagine together the silly world of Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, where the moon is jealous of the sun, who shines in the middle of the night. Try to figure out whether it might just be possible, as the Walrus suggests, for seven maids with seven mops to sweep all of the sand off the beach. How silly! So much mathing! And, okay, maybe the twist at the end is a little macabre — the Walrus and the Carpenter take some baby oysters for a “pleasant walk, a pleasant talk” on the beach, and then they eat them. But that’s a lesson in not getting in cars with strangers, if I ever read one.

The Tall Book of Make-Believe, selected by Jane Werner, pictures by Garth Williams. Photo Credit: Allison Lehman.

Poems are the ultimate quick reads. Read bedtime poems instead of bedtime stories, especially on those nights when bath time goes longer than planned. In fact, a short poem can be squeezed into almost any part of the day. Walking to, or riding on, the train is perfect for a rousing recital of Laura Richard’s “Baby Goes to Boston”.

“What does the train say? Jiggle-joggle-jiggle-joggle
What does the train say? Jiggle-joggle-jee.
Will the little baby go riding with the locomo?
Loky-moky-poky-stoky-smoky-choky-chee!
Ding! Ding! The bells ring! Jiggle-joggle-jiggle-joggle
Ding! DIng! The bells ring! Jiggle-joggle-jee.
Ring for joy because we go riding with the locomo!
Loky-moky-poky-stoky-smoky-choky-chee!”

Given that every minute you spend with your child brings you closer and improves their well-being, each stolen minute for a poem will add up to hours and days of quality interaction and enhance your chance of growing a well-adjusted child. Well-adjusted children seem to be more affectionate (during certain life stages).³

One of the two primary poetry books from my childhood. The “Children’s Hour” is here. But check out “Invictus”: terrible stuff has happened to me, but none of it matters, “I am the master of my fate;/ I am the captain of my soul,” is hardcore AF.

Both of my children cuddle up to me when I recite the last three stanzas of “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Well, the older one looks like she wants to cuddle up, but she’s temporarily — I hope — too cool.) They add sound effects, make mischievous faces, and attempt to “devour me with kisses, their arms about me entwine” as I say the lines. We had to look up the Bishop of Bingen and his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine. Give it a read — it’s in the picture above if you missed it.

I recommend reading tons of poems together. But choose a great one or few, maybe three, to read or recite over and over again. Then be patient. Before you know it, in a few short years, the children will initiate the poem or fill in the words as you recite. Someday, when you are too old to remember the poems, you will still feel loved when the child says it back to you. (Or, so I’m told.)

My childrens’ used copy of my childhood poetry book (so as not to further destroy my book that previously belonged to my mother, as evidenced by the doodles inside). Edited by Jane Werner. Illustrated by Gertrude Elliott.

The more poems the child reads, the smarter they will become. (If having an expansive vocabulary and recognizing literary references is any measure of intelligence.) Seemingly in no time, words that were once just recited, like “devour,” “gallumph,” boisterous,” “repose,” and “cavort,” will become commonly incorporated into your daily life. Memorizing poems, along with the precise words they contain, will feel as natural as memorizing songs. And then, like an odd little elf, the tiny child will begin to use these fantastical words in mixed company, to your private delight.

Poems make phenomenal dinner time conversation starters. When Robert Frost wrote “Fire and Ice”, why did he compare hate to fire? Why didn’t he equate fire with love and ice with hate? What is the opposite of hate, anyway? Can Emily Dickinson really be “Nobody”? Can you be nobody if you’re not alone? What makes you somebody? What would it mean to do as Andrew Marvell suggests in “To His Coy Mistress”?

“Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

Whatever you do, don’t let on to the child that you are having literary discussions!

The Big Golden Book of Poetry. (Pictured above.) Edited by Jane Werner. Illustrated by Gertrude Elliott.

If it isn’t enough to exercise their memory and thinking muscles, and teach them oodles of (useful, fanciful, superfluous) words, poems will teach the children to recognize metaphors. One of my favorite bedtime poems is “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” by Eugene Field. It’s about three children who sail off, “in a wooden shoe,” one night, “on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew.” It’s short and sweet, calm and lilting, dreamlike. And, if it isn’t evident from the title, “Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes/ and Nod is a little head/ and the wooden shoe that sails the skies/ is a wee one’s trundle bed.”

My dad read this poem to me, and when I read it to my children, I am filled with a feeling of safety and comfort, as if I can almost sense the warmth of my dad’s lap, his arms about me entwine, feel his scratchy beard, and channel his voice. I still vividly remember the day I recognized the metaphor.

But the best part about reading poems to children is a magical chemistry that comes from reading your favorites so many times that you develop a secret language.

(If you didn’t take the time to read The Children’s Hour, pictured above, go back and read it before reading on.)

Sharing a secret language with someone is the epitome of devotion. The child will practically tremble in delight when you squeeze her little hand and say, “I have you fast in my fortress.”⁴ They will know that you mean, ‘I love you so much that you will be with me until the world ends.’ Or as my youngest recently said, unprompted by me, “Momma, that means ‘I will love you until infinity plus one, right?’” (Queue the private delight.) And when I tell them, “Yes, I will always love you.” They will know that I can thank Mary Elizabeth Frye for the words,

“…I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.”

What poems do you love to read to your kids? To your friends? To yourself?

Are there any poems that have been meaningful in your life? Please share! I want them all!

There are more public health and medicine related posts to come. But I challenge anyone to argue that something so uplifting as to improve the quality of your experience of life isn’t a form of medicine for the soul.

1. The drawing was based on the first line of 1984 by George Orwell. But it also makes me think of the line, “The moon was shining sulkily,/ Because she thought the sun/ Had got no business to be there/ After the day was done –/ “It’s very rude of him,” she said,/ “To come and spoil the fun.” from “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Louis Carroll.

Also

This is how my second-grade daughter has been taught to begin persuasive essays, and I love it.

2. For a more shocking poem, there is “Ode to the Four Letter Words” by Anonymous. The first few stanzas are excellent, but you might want to take the age of your child into account as you read on. My favorite set of lines appeals to the seemingly universal childhood love of poop jokes:

“You can go lay a cable, or do number two,
Or sit on the toidy and make a do-do,
But ladies and men who are socially fit
Under no provocation will go take a shit!”

3. I have no evidence for this, but it seems true to me based on an N of 2. However, this assertion does not meet my usual epistemic standard.

4. These are the last words my dad ever said to me.