Poet's Choice

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By Robert Pinsky

Sunday, July 17, 2005

It is in us to like poetry, just as it is in us to dance. Children like both, as they like making pictures. It almost seems as if someone has to teach us that we don't know how to dance, or how to read poems.

The best writers do not write "for children" from a superior position, speaking down from the heights of "understanding poetry" to those who do not understand it. Dr. Seuss, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edward Lear and Walter de la Mare made the kinds of poems they themselves would like to read. I admire these poets because they strive to give pleasure not merely to children but to readers of any age.

I like de la Mare's sense of the grotesque. Here are the opening stanzas of his

John Mouldy

I spied John Mouldy in his cellar,

Deep down twenty steps of stone;

In the dusk he sat a-smiling,

Smiling there alone.

He read no book, he snuffed no candle;

The rats ran in, the rats ran out;

And far and near, the drip of water

Went whisp'ring about.

Maybe even more deliciously weird and alarming is