Did you like Nursery Rhymes as a kid?

posted by Melissa
Who liked to have nursery rhymes read to them as a child?
"Me! Me! I did!"

I was looking through some of my kids book shelves the other day and I came across this book from my own childhood.  Best Loved Nursery Rhymes and Songs (with Helpful Guide for Parents.)  I flipped through the pages; remembering my pink gingham bedspread and 70's green metal kitchen set, my birthday girl statues sitting sweetly on the dark pink corner shelf that hung up to the right of my bed.
After I returned back to the year 2011, I read rhyme after rhyme.  The pictures in this book are so old-school.  Some of the poems even more so, harkening back to what seems like ages ago, with their misogynistic tone.  (ok, so for some, still alive and strong today...just not in my home.  Right, Jamie?)

I recall this poem as a favorite, "There was a Little Girl and She Had a Little Curl."  I had stick straight golden blond hair and don't believe I ever acted horrid as a child.  Perhaps it foreshadowed to my curly, teased, big permed hair high school days.

Pictured below is the doozy I read this morning.  I'll type it out here, since the print is hard to read: 

"Needles and Pins"

Needles and pins,

needles and pins,

When a man marries

his trouble begins.

In my parents defense, I never remember hearing this one as a child.

Lastly, this is one I have known by heart for decades.  And it turned out to be one of Lily's favorite poems  as well when she was younger (although she just alerted me that she hates it now.  She hates lots of things now.  Disgusting is her most used word.  She says she writes much better poems and that I should post one.  I will, another time.)  I think it may have been one of the first things she recited from her own memory.

Good bye for now,

Melissa

Kitchen Song

my, un-orderly cupboard, empty white bowls included.

I awoke this morning thinking of poetry.  I sat on the couch last night reading poem after poem, sonnet after sonnet, in an attempt to choose my poem to memorize.  I think I have ended up with a new challenge, to narrow down my list.

I was an English major decades ago (only two!) back in college, and poetry classes were some of my favorites.  Now here I am two degrees later and in nursing school at a community college, at the same time falling in love with poetry all over again.

I have two definites on my list of poems I will memorize.  How many do think we can squeeze into our brains in one month?  So far, I have one by William Carlos Williams and a Shakespeare sonnet.  When I was looking up insights to my WCW poem online this morning, I stumbled upon this poet, Laura Kasischke.


Kitchen Song
by Laura Kasischke

The white bowls in the orderly
cupboards filled with nothing.

The sound
of applause in running water.
All those who've drowned in oceans, all
who've drowned in pools, in ponds, the small
family together in the car hit head on. The pantry

full of lilies, the lobsters scratching to get out of the pot, and God

being pulled across the heavens
in a burning car.

The recipes
like confessions.
The confessions like songs.
The sun. The bomb. The white

bowls in the orderly
cupboards filled with blood. I wanted

something simple, and domestic. A kitchen song.

They were just driving along. Dad
turned the radio off, and Mom
turned it back on.

I like the simplicity, the imagery, the way the darkness is there whether she wants it to be or not.

I immediately felt a kindred spirit to this woman in Michigan, sitting perhaps at a desk near a window writing.  I wonder what color her kitchen is?

-Melissa