Welcome to Poetry Friday. Our host today is Sally Murphy. Thank you, Sally, for hosting and my thoughts are with her and her country in the struggle against the horrendous fires. Sally has shared a soothing poem about the beach and also the good news that she is busy compiling a list of her favorite novels in verse. I’ll look forward to seeing her recommendations.
My post today is about something I’ve been exploring, that is, the work of the first American children’s poets.
James Sterling Tippett (1985-1958) is an American children’s poet who anyone writing for children can learn from. He saw the world from a child’s perspective and it’s clearly evident in his gentle rhyme and in his subjects, still relevant today. As a boy, he lived on his grandfather’s farm in Missouri, but as a young man he moved to Nashville then New York to teach. He wrote of the country and the city with authority.
Crickety Cricket: The Best-Loved Poems of James S. Tippet, is an anthology of his work illustrated by Mary Chalmers.
This is one of those many books I wish I had read to my boys when they were little. First, a sample of his poems about the country and nature:
FAMILIAR FRIENDS (The first of three Stanzas) The horses, the pigs, And the chickens, The turkeys, the ducks And the sheep! I can see all my friends From my window As soon as I waken from sleep.
Because of copyright restrictions, I’ll stop here, but I will say that the poem continues with images of a cat walking a fence, geese swimming, a pony trotting, Cows switching flies, and a mother dog with a surprise of new pups. There is a lot of action in this simple poem.
HOUSE FOR BLUEBIRDS (two of four stanzas) Bluebirds, Come to this house Which we have hung For you and your young. We made a little porch Where you can sit. Please, bluebirds, Come and look at it.
The reader feels the longing in the child’s voice. It’s a sweet poem. Unfortunately, for a child, when you have a bird house, immediate occupancy is unlikely.
In contrast to his poems about farm life, he writes poems about city life. He wrote about the subway and he also wrote about the mystery of an apartment buildings:
THE ROOF (two of four stanzas) At the top of the stairway We open a door And there is the roof Spread out like a floor. There are little roof-houses Behind which we hide And many tall pipes And a wall at the side.
To a child living in an apartment building or not, the roof must indeed seem like a world apart, a mysterious place.
It helps me in my efforts to write for kids, to look at poets that came before, like Tippett. Their images and vocabulary are still evocative even for kids today, which I find rather comforting.
Here’s a nature poem I wrote that I’ll share. It’s inspired by a walk my husband and I take along a stream that sometimes is full of frogs. It sat at the bottom of this leafy wall of shale. Sorry, no frogs today! You have to imagine them hiding.
MORNIN’, FROGS! I thump my feet as I walk by the stream. Hear the frogs fly, fleeing from me. I mean no harm. I'd fancy to be them. But they hide under rocks, and won't let me see them. © Janice Scully 2020