Favorite Childhood Poem?

[WordSoup]

What was your favorite poem as a child?

I had so many, but the one that I remember my mom and I laughing about the most was called "ELETELEPHONY"

I'm sitting here with Volume #1 Childcraft, The How and Why Library, Poems and Rhymes, copyright 1972. (Took this book with me when I moved out because I am the world's greatest pack-rat.) :o

Pg. 224

Eletelephony
by Laura E. Richards

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant-
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone-
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)

Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
the louder buzzed the telephee-
(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

(Well, it was hilarious when I was 3)

OK---- WHO'S NEXT?

[Betty W01]

I remember that one from when I was a kid, too!

My favorite was Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Swing".

And one of my recent favorites is A.A. Milne's "James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree" (and I can recite it pretty much from memory!)

[WhisperingBard]

The *entire* A Child's Garden of Verses by Stevenson was a favorite. All-time favorite, though, is a Shel Silverstein poem, "Listen to the Mustn'ts, Child":

Listen to the Mustn'ts, child, listen to the Don'ts.
Listen to the Shouldn'ts, the Impossibles, the Won'ts.
Listen to the Never Haves, then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

[William Haskins]

i second shel silverstein... a prolific and giant of a talent. i'd rate "the giving tree" as my favorite. before i was out of elementary school, i had fallen in love with some of robert frost's more accessible work ("stopping by the woods...", "mending wall", etc.).

soon after i discovered e.a. robinson's "richard cory" and stormed the gates of the darker frontiers.

[Betty W01]

If you're talking grown-up poetry, I like Robert Frost ("The Road Not Taken", "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Mending Wall"), Langston Hughes ("Mother to Son", Lullaby for a Black Mother", "Death of an Old Seaman", "Alabama Earth"), Joe Bayly ("A Psalm on the Death of an 18-Year-Old Son"), Annie Flint Johnson ("The Blessings That Remain"), George Ella Lyon ("Invocation"), and several poems by Rabindranath Tagore whose titles I never knew. Oh, and I love the entire book of poems by Carmen Bernos De Gatztold, Prayers from the Ark.


[I'm a poet and I love to read good poetry. Can you tell?]

[MacAllister]

I stuttered rather badly as a child, so my mother taught me about a million limericks (or maybe she and the speech therapist conspired) and I still have a fondness for them. :)

But she also read me "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and I just loved it. Still do.

[maestrowork]

We have the 300 Deng Dynasty poems. Try to remember all of them when you're 6...

:Wha:

[Susan Gable]

I didn't read them as a child, but as a grown-up I adore Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky's work. Funny! Great stuff!

Their works are a wonderful introduction to poetry, IMHO. In fact, I think if more kids were exposed to poetry like that, they wouldn't moan and roll their eyes when a high school or college teacher mentioned the word poetry.
Susan G.

[WordSoup]

Amen, Susan!

Silverstein & Frost :Clap:


Ray, can you give us one of those Deng Dynasty poems?