Many years ago before I born, when my mother, aunt and uncle were small children, myGrandmother Helen Springer Moran began writing poetry, about and for her children.
She began her poems from their perspective and how they saw the world.
She wanted her poems to be published more than most things in life, though I was to learn this much later. She passed away about six months before I was born, I didn’t even know that her poems existed till many years later, when my own mother lay dying.
The one thing besides, having her children around her, that she enjoyed most was having those same poems read to her over and over again. They brought back lovely memories of her childhood to her in her last days.
Many children don’t have the ideal childhood, I was one of them. I wonder if in fact there is such a thing as an ideal childhood or is it only in the imagination of Hollywood?
When I first decided to take these poems my grandmother wrote, lengthen them, and add my own, thereby publishing, Wee Three: A Mother’s Love in Verse, it was first a gift to my mother and grandmother. It was a way for me to honor their memory and the memories of children. I wanted to help people to reconnect with the child within and to bring a link back to families.
Wee Three: A Mother’s Love in Verse, carries with it the best memories of childhood. In both its lessons and its joys, for childhood is full of both.
I was raised in a family of nine, we were very poor. Not every memory of my childhood is good, in fact most aren’t. Yet, my intention was to focus on the best and greatest things that it held.
Those are of imagination, beauty, joy, discovery, and gentle lessons. The lessons that give us boundaries and teach us responsibility without harm, as told in “Punishment.”
Wee Three: A Mother’s Love in Verse, is meant to be read to the young or the young at heart. It was written to help me remember the innocence and joy that we all begin life with and share that with others.
It is a childhood keepsake book, to be passed down between the generations, bridging the gap, between life as it was in the past and life that is yet to be.
My hope is that it will bring joy, wonder, and imagination back to the world. Today, we live in such a fast paced technological society; it seems we have lost so much of life’s pleasure in just being.
These beloved verses and the illustrations of E.H. Shepard were to see me through my childhood filling my mind and fertilizing my imagination as they did for so many children. Yet where did that love of poetry go for so many people?
I think it is in the way poetry is taught in today’s world. For instance, on my first day of Honors English class in college as the professor was giving us the curriculum for the semester. She listed what we would cover in the order in which we would cover it. The very last on the list was poetry, with a shrug she said “I’m not really comfortable with poetry, so am leaving it for last. I hope there isn’t time.” I heard much the same, when I joined the editorial board of the college Journal of the Arts. The poetry picked for the journal by and large was full of abstract thought. It was as if the general consensus about poetry is if it’s abstract and difficult to figure out the meaning behind the words than it must be good. No wonder so many say they don’t understand poetry or don’t like poetry, when English professors admit they don’t understand it.
It is a shame that poetry has such a bad rap, (no pun intended) as poetry weaves through our entire lives, even if we don’t know it. You hear it in the lyrics of the music. It is in our greeting cards on coffee mugs, in commercials, you name it and you will find poetry. Yet many parents shy away from either reading it to their children or picking it up and reading it to themselves.
What is the meaning of poetry to me you might ask? Poetry and verse are short stories telling the tale lying in the heart and mind of the author.
