Alison wrote:

>>It's a real test of a book - anyone who thinks pasteboard books are easy
to write should be forced to read their limp lines and bathetic sentiments
out loud forever and ever - I remember in particular one horrible book about
bunnies that for some reason my kids demanded night after night - the only
book I have ever thrown away<<

I hated those books and I am so, so grateful my son outgrew them relatively
quickly. There was one, in particular, about a dog that had to find a lost
lamb--or something like that--and I remember once thinking, around the third
time I had read it that night, that the person who'd written it should be
condemned to hear it read (or to read it aloud to themselves) for all
eternity.

Max's mention of nursery rhymes reminded me of another story: I started
reading Mother Goose and other children's poetry to my son very early, and I
wrote for him a series of about 5 or so limericks that he absolutely adored,
and he would help me make up rhymes, and one of his favorite games was to
provide the rhyming words at the end of the lines in the nursery rhymes we
read. Well, when he as about just about three, I decided to go down to one
of the open readings at the St. Marks Poetry Project and my wife and son
came along. When we told my son where we were going, I asked him if he
wanted me to read one or two of the limericks for him; he said okay and he
seemed a little bit excited by the idea of going to a poetry reading, but
once we got there, he changed his mind. Not only did he not want me to read
the poems I'd written for him, but he didn't want me to read any of my poems
at all. When I got up to read, he got so upset my wife had to take him out
of the building so he wouldn't disturb the reading. He was crying so hard
and so angrily, I was half-expecting him to start hyperventilating. We got
in the car and he was still crying, and all he kept saying over and over
again was that he didn't want me to read my poems out loud ever. I had to
promise him that this would be the last time. I don't remember a lot of that
conversation--we tried, unsuccessfully, to reason with him (silly us, right?
Reasoning with a three-year-old); and there were other things as well--but
what finally got him to calm down was when I started saying "his" limericks
for him. It was as if he had been afraid that by saying the poems aloud I
had given something away that was no longer mine/his/ours; or as if I had
violated some privacy that he had configured in his mind, that poetry was
something he and I did together and was not meant to be shared; or some
combination of both. Or maybe it was something else entirely, but it was a
very profound example for me of the power of poetry (and of words in
general) to make a connection between people. And it was only about poetry
that my son seemed to feel this sense of ownership; he did not have a
problem with my telling stories to other kids, or with my reading his books
to other kids.

Now, he still likes to make up poems, and he still likes when I make up
poems for and/or with him, but he thinks it's kind of cool that his father
publishes and gives readings, especially since he saw his name in the
acknowledgments to the Gulistan. (Which, by the way, should be out next week
or so. Yay!)

Richard