Reading The Drowsy Hours
Poetry has been a great source of comfort and joy to me recently. When it came to reading to Maya, however, I had pretty much stuck to reading stories i.e. prose. The only poetry she may have encountered were nursery rhymes. When she expressed what I thought was joy on reading a poem to her recently, I was intrigued and thought to read her poetry along with stories. But what poems ? Were there any that are written for children ? And if they are, how good were they ? Were they better than nursery rhymes ? What constituted good poems for children ?
It was as I was reading Dr. Seuss’ Cat In The Hat that I realized that what Maya enjoyed was the sound of the words: the cadence, the inflections, the way the words sounded when strung together and the way it was read. I also wanted to read poems that would grow with her, poems that would ingrain in her a love of language, demonstrate how imagination can give flight to words and words can fuel imagination till together, there is just pure joy in reading the work. Now, did such works exist ?
I first heard of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verse” as I listened to Bill Moyers’ interview of W.S. Merwin. I ran into a reference to it in another book of poems. I checked out the book from the local library and together, Maya and I fell in love with the poems. From the very first poem, “Bed in Summer”, the book grabbed us.
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
The poems were imaginative, well written enough to be enjoyed by an adult, but reflected the fantasies and the world of a child. Delightful verses abound:
I saw the dimpling river pass
And be the sky’s blue looking-glass;
The dusty roads go up and down
With people tramping in to town. – from Foreign Lands
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. – from My Shadow
Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand.
It flows along for ever,
With trees on either hand.
Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating–
Where will all come home? – from Where Go The Boats ?
Among the 65 or so poems in the book are long poems such as “Travel” and 4 line poems such as “Rain” and even 2 line poems such as “The Happy Thought”. The verse is first class, but they always reflected a child’s world, a world of trees, fantasies and play. Stevenson was sick for much of his childhood (what it was is still open to debate, with diagnosis ranging from tuberculosis to sarcoidosis). Many of his poems such as “The Land of Counterpane” reflect the life of a sick child. He was cared for by a nurse, Alison Cunningham. Her tender care so defined his childhood that he dedicated the “Child’s Garden of Verse” to her, writing:
From the sick child, now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold!
And grant it, Heaven, that all who read
May find as dear a nurse at need,
And every child who lists my rhyme,
In the bright, fireside, nursery clime,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childish days rejoice!
Maya wants me to read the book starting with the dedication and reading the first twenty or so poems. Consequently, she (and I) hasn’t yet gotten to reading the later poems. “Papa, dhodu book odhu, from her boy” she says, “from her boy” being the title of the dedication (To Alison Cunningham From Her Boy). The copy that I have is beautifully illustrated by Michael Foreman, though Maya hardly glances much at them.
Reading the poems such as “The Lamplighter” or even “Bed in Summer” provide a glimpse of what life was like in those pre-electricity days. Poems like “A Thought” reflect the religious fervor with which his nurse raised him.
Once we were hooked on these poems, I sought out other books of poems for little children. I thus ran into The Drowsy Hours, a collection of 16 poems meant for bedtime reading. The collection has some superb poems starting with this one, called Nightfall by Barbara Juster Esbensen:
One by one
that dark magician
Night
folds the colors of the day
like scarves
and hides them
in his sleeves
There are so many other wonderful poems such as “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” by Eugene Field, The Starlighter by Arthur Guiterman, The Gentle Giant by Dennis Lee and Manhattan Lullaby by Norma Farber. Here is an excerpt from The Mouse by Elizabeth Coatsworth:
I heard a mouse
Bitterly complaining
In a crack of moonlight
Aslant on the floor —
“Little I ask
and that little is not granted
There are few crumbs
In this world any more.
The breadbox is tin
and I cannot get in.
The jam’s in a jar
That my teeth cannot mar.”
Some of the poems in these two books are so melodious that they have been set to music. For example, a quick search of Wynken, Blynken and Nod yields several Youtube videos of popular artists performing the poem.
Now, I alternate playing music and reading poetry to her as part of her bedtime ritual.
My only wish with reading these to her is to get her to appreciate the intermingling of imagination and language. Merwin says in the aforementioned interview: “Its very important if their parents can read to them. And not just read prose, to read poetry. Because listening to poetry is not the same as listening to prose. And those children who’ve grown up hearing a parent reading poems to them are changed by that forever. They have it forever. They always have that voice. They always hear it. Always able to hear it“.
