Just Hum a Few Bars?

Yes, I take requests. Lemming put in an "official request" for an animal poem. Thing is, she didn't say why, or what kind of animal poem she'd like.

My first response was to give her Ogden Nash's "The Panther" in the comments. My second response is to give her Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin, because it's the second poem that comes to my mind when someone says animal poem. But there are lots of others, most of which use animals metaphorically (like The Heavy Bear That Goes With Me). It crossed my mind that Lemming might want a poem to share with her two little girls, but what I thought of was Harry Graham's poem about John and the shark, from Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (which you can read on Google Books if you type in the title, but I can't for the life of me make a link to it) and Shel Silverstein's poem Feeding Time:
Oh alligator, palligator, get up out of bed.
It's breakfast time and I can't find
Our keeper Mister Fred.
He smokes a pipe and wears a little
Derby on his head,
And he was 'sposed to meet me here
To help to get you fed.
Maybe it's just the contrariness that winter brings out in me, but Woodchucks is not a soft and cuddly animal poem, either. I have my animals gathered close around me on this frigid winter day (children too, since it's a snow day), but there's no use trying to find a poem about how soft the bunny's fur is or what a cat's face looks like when you open door after door and still fail to reveal the door into summer. So here is a poem about woodchucks:

Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.

The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the littlest woodchuck's face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.

Then minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.

There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.

Don't you just love the use of the word "Nazi" in that last line? As I've echoed before, "I hate those guys." And I just saw a preview for a (real) movie about Nazi zombies.

So. Any more requests?

For Purposes of Corruption

We recently got out the copy of Uncle Shelby's ABZ book that our friends John and Val gave us as a new baby present, with the inscription "for purposes of corruption." For fifteen years, this book has been on the top shelf of one of our tallest bookcases. We don't ever have to hide books from our kids; we just shelve them and see if they're discovered. The possibility of discovery has increased in the last few years; 15-year-old Eleanor is now about 5'10" and 12-year-old Walker is already 5'3". But there are a lot of bookshelves in our house....

The kids were greatly amused to find out that something their dad has always said, that he's going off to work so he can buy them "toys and oatmeal," is from the ABZ book. They were even more amused by the wickedness of the suggestion that daddy can't afford a haircut ("poor, poor, poor daddy") and he's taking a nap, and look, there are the scissors....

I'm not a big fan of picture books, generally. I don't have a lot of nostalgia for the days before my kids could read. But we did have a lot of fun with the ABZ book, almost as much fun as we had with Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children, or Roald Dahl's Vicar of Nibbleswicke, Revolting Rhymes, and George's Marvellous Medicine. I found a review of George's Marvellous Medicine on Amazon that sums up the attraction of these kinds of books quite nicely:

You won't want enquiring minds to know about this, February 24, 2005

By	Amanda Richards "Modest to the extreme" (Georgetown, Guyana)

This review is from: George's Marvellous Medicine (Puffin Fiction) (Paperback)

While all Roald Dahl's books push the envelope somewhat, I thought this one went far too far. As an adult, I did find it amusing, but as I read, the thought of my child copying this stuff kept popping to the front of my mind.
Yes, it is an extremely preposterous concept, and no-one in their right mind would take it as anything else than gross humor, but this is definitely not a book I would place lovingly in the hands of a young child, especially one in my care.
It's full of horrible people saying and doing terrible things, and Dahl isn't one whit apologetic about it. Even Jerry Springer does a little serious bit at the end of his show to try to soothe the bruises and soften the impact.
This book revolves around a little boy who uses non-consumable and extremely dangerous household items to make a batch of "medicine" for his miserable crone of a grandmother, without censure from his parents, one of whom actually encourages him to make another batch.
Nope, I like it, but I can't seriously recommend it for the children of people I like.
Amanda Richards, February 24, 2005

Ooh, obviously another one to put on the top shelf of your highest bookcase! Here's one more sample from the ABZ book--it's the first two pages:

A is for apple. See the nice green apple. M-M-M-M-Good. How many nice green apples can you eat? Make a circle around the number of nice green little apples you ate today.
1 2 3 4 7 12 26 38 57 83 91 116

B is for baby. See the baby. The baby is fat. The baby is pink. The baby can cry. The baby can laugh. See the baby play. Play, baby, play. Pretty, pretty, baby. Mommy loves the baby more than she loves you.

I hope my friends are pleased with our time frame for corrupting our children. We could have pushed it along a bit more, I know, but some things just can't be rushed if they're to be done correctly.