Children’s Poetry

The usual criteria for choosing poems to teach
children are mistaken, if one wants poetry to be
more than a singsong sort of Muzak in the
background of elementary education. It can
be so much more. These criteria are total under-
standability, which stunts children’s poetic educa-
tion by giving them nothing to understand they
have not already understood; “childlikeness”
of theme and treatment, designed for their
feelings and their intelligence; and familiar-
ity, which obliges them to go on reading the same
poems their parents and grandparents had to read.
Poetry has often been written about in ways that are
more difficult, mysterious and remote than actually is.