This coming Friday has been declared World Poetry Day by UNESCO, so I found myself looking into the archives to find this post Stephanie Madewell wrote for me when Hudson was born: I’m feeling inspired to try finding some poems to read with him.
by Stephanie Madewell
One of the great sneaky pleasures of being around little children getting to experience all sorts of firsts, to see and be reminded of wonders hidden in plain sight. One of those everyday wonders is poetry. For many of us, childhood is woven through with nursery rhymes and funny poems, but eventually life tilts to prose. Poetry retreats to the highest, dustiest shelf, (maybe) respected and (generally) unread.
This is a tragedy!
We are born to poetry and poems are born to be read aloud, which makes babies and poetry a perfect match. Tiny babies are an especially ideal audience for reading or reciting poems to – they don’t need pages to turn or pictures, just your voice and face.
There are many, many good places to look for poems, and many excellent books of poems specifically for children, but my favorite read aloud anthology is The Rattle Bag,edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. Hughes and Heaney, good friends, were both incredibly well-read and extraordinary poets. They sat down together in the early ’80s and compiled over 400 of their favorite poems, then put them in alphabetical order. It’s an oddly genius arrangement that lets each poem sing out, unexpectedly and wonderfully, and makes it easy to stumble across treasures. It’s the perfect volume to pick up and flip through until you find something that catches your eye, and there’s enough there to get you through a lifetime – if I could commit the whole to memory and ended up stranded in darkest Peru, I would feel pretty lucky. And while few of these poems were written for children, almost all of them can be read to them. I’ve read selections from it to squirmy babes, antic toddlers, and fidgety kindergarteners, and the response is always ‘MORE!’
And you never know. Keep it up, and eventually you might have someone who’ll recite poems for you.
[Republished from my previous parenting site, Baby Mine, August 2011; Thank you again to Stephanie of Even Cleveland]
I’ll be the first to admit that we haven’t given Sacramento very much attention since moving nearby. Aron and I have more often gone in the other direction for date nights if we’re up for driving (to nearby Winters, slightly-further Napa, and within-reach San Francisco) or looked close-by in Davis.
But one of our very first after moving out here took us to Ella—Aron planned dinner and a show at a local cabaret—and I’d say it’s been my favorite restaurant in the area (worthy of a driving destination) ever since.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! When we were living in New York, I’d always try to sneak out of work for a few hours around lunch to see some of the parade. I loved feeling the beat of drums and the sounds of bagpipes echoing in my chest. And all that plaid! This year there seem to be some questions about the inclusivity of the event, so rather than share some favorite photos from past parades I thought it might be more appropriate to share some photos from a different New York-inspired activity. New York Times, that is.
We embarked on “wine school” last night with some friends. Eric Asimov, the food & drink critic for the Times, invited readers to “Get Out [their] Corkscrew” and started tasting emblematic wines—the idea being to really get to know one distinct type of wine each month. So last night, instead of sipping Guinness, we sat down to taste a classic Bordeaux.
I love anything that involves pseudo-scientific rigger and food, but this was particularly fun. Here’s the article, and the plan.
Anyway, regarding the St. Patrick’s Day parade: in looking back, I found that I wrote this on Hudson’s Nine Month photo post about one year’s celebration…
“We started the month on St. Patrick’s Day, a ridiculous scene wherein we made the mistake of trying to see the parade from Central Park and ended up fleeing the rowdy crowds while trying to keep Hudson asleep in the stroller. That meant frantic side-of-the-street changes (as another group of chanting drunk students would approach) until we ended up walking down First Avenue past the UN with Aron pulling the stroller backwards to keep the high sun off Hudson’s face. I took a picture of the struggle for when I’m tempted to recount glory days and only remember what was awesome about having a baby in the city. I can pull it out and say ‘Are you sure?’”
Haha. A good dose of reality. Could come in handy on those days I take Skyler on walks and inevitably miss passing by Everyman Espresso, Madewell, and at least four H&Ms on the way to (our) Central Park.
