I am not my kids' buddy

I am in awe of God for giving me this family.
They are so beautiful, my heart is all welled up. These gifts are so good. I cherish them every day we have together.

Big question-- as a mother what's my job? They may find me a trustworthy teacher, confidant, advisor, comforter, encourager, home base, love-giver, patcher of pants, admirer of artwork, storyteller, listener. There is some overlap between a mother and a friend. Friends do some of the things mothers do. Some of this is a future question. Lucky the mother whose grown children consider her their friend. A mother can be a best friend to a pre-schooler, but not in the way that another little kid can. A baby almost looks to his mother as a part of himself. But as a kid grows, do they keep wanting Mom to be their friend? More importantly, do they need Mom to be something their friends are not?
It's dawning on me that I don't make the best buddy. Not to my kids. They have lots of other friends and family who can be buddies. Maybe that's not one of my jobs. Buddies don't tell you what to do, and hey--that is definitely part of my Mama-job. A buddy might think you're the juice no matter what you do, but it's Mama's job to help teach right and wrong, to plot the right course, to offer a timely rebuke. Mama's got to take care of you and teach you to take care of yourself.

I want my kids to love me. I love when they tell me their secrets. (Not that I have any secrets. My lips are sealed. Don't try to wrest anything from me!) I hope that we will grow more and more into real, deep friends someday. But right now, these little pups are just learning how to be. How to read, how to work, how to love. When I let myself try and be best buds, there's too much of my own hope that they will love me forever, running me. It keeps me from making decisions that are the best for them. It keeps me from being the mother I hope to be.
We enjoy each other lots, daily. It's not the enjoying I'm talking about here, or the giving and receiving of love, but when I need them to be pleased with me at every turn.


I think I need to temporarily not care too much what they think of me.
It might actually set them free. Because I'm their Mama. That's not ever going to change. Whether we're buddies today or not.

Learning to Read

I've loved Leila's recent posts on learning to read. Never taught anyone to read before, but Gibbie and Ezra are on the cusp! I learned to read in first grade. I remember longing to read around five years of age, but it didn't then occur to me I could learn before they taught us in school. Maybe I wasn't ready to any earlier. By second grade I was reading chapter books late into the night.
What we're doing: reading out loud, lots and lots and lots. Picture books, poetry, comic books, favorite novels. This is seriously my favorite pastime. I basically married Paul because he would read books out loud with me. Gibbie won a little prize at his school last year among kids his age for reading the most hours during a reading fundraiser. The tricky thing was remembering to write it down. Our family chapter book really put us over the top because it means we read in the car and while doing dishes and other otherwise unliterary moments.

We are going through some popular phonics-early readers, but mostly the kids seem to respond best to tailored instruction. For instance, I've noticed that Ezra breaks words down into sounds orally, but has trouble sounding out written words, and is sounding out and writing his own phonetic words in a way Gibbie never did. Gibbie, when we work on reading, always wants to write out the words we sound out on his slate or in his notebook. We did get them each a special notebook and pen, just theirs, in which they do plenty of practicing and playing around.

I would like to read Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise Eide because her premise makes so much sense to me; that English is phonetic if you really learn the actual rules of phonics. (I think; I haven't read this yet!) This makes so much beautiful sense to me.

These boys are both writing lots of letters everyday, and have many of the building blocks of reading in hand. They seem to be synthesizing those elements into bona fide reading in different ways. All very exciting, and we're just not going to push it, or worry about comparing them to any brilliant friends of ours who all were fluently reading years earlier than us, all right?

Living peacefully with your Four-Year-Old

I find in parenting I need to keep using what I learned during birth. In labor, when a new phase came, it took a while to figure out how to deal with it. I would be laboring, coping with contractions, and then it felt like they suddenly changed. They became unbearable, and nothing I was doing helped at all.

Now, in parenting, I find that when we develop patterns of whining and misbehaviour, (or parental frustration and anger) when our usual strategies stop working and we just can't seem to catch our rhythm or get along, it often means we're growing! It takes observing ourselves and one another, praying for wisdom and cooperating to figure out how to live together as we grow.
Recently, we were having fits of aggravating the younger brother, misuse of tools, snitching things and denying it, total lack of cooperation in basic things like getting dressed; you know what I'm talking about?

My normal avenues of eliciting cooperation, as well as discipline tactics just weren't working the way they had. Things felt off.
I told Paul and a few friends that something was up and I couldn't figure it out. I wasn't sure if he needed better-set boundaries, or more attention, or it was just a phase, or what? (it's so helpful to know that sometimes things are just hard and there's not way around it.) When we're having troubles I am reminded to pray, to ask for help. I like to make sure the kids know how much we love them in times of conflict; we need extra assurance of love when we're rubbing wrong against one another.

The breakthrough came when Paul commented to me that he noticed misbehavior seemed to happen when our Little Bear had an idea for something he wanted to do. He would do his plan, but not in a sanctioned way; like by taking something he had been told not to, and doing something he wasn't supposed to do with it. Frequently with scissors. I have learned from Montessori that when children disobey, they need more freedom. This does not mean that we don't expect good behavior, but that often lack of freedom drives misbehavior, so Paul's comment really rang a bell. I spent a day observing myself and Little Bear as I pondered this.

Then I talked about it with Little Bear. He agreed that he was bored and had a lot of ideas, and also that things hadn't been going very well lately and that we'd been having a hard time listening and getting along. I shared with him that I do expect him to listen to me, but also that I want to listen to him. And I told him he was ready for his Own Scissors. We worked together to find a place for the scissors where he could get them, but his little brother couldn't. We discussed some very concrete rules for use of the scissors. We discussed consequences for not following those rules. Then I helped him make a special box to keep them in, and signs saying that they were just for him. Ooh, was this fun! He spent all day doing projects with the scissors, and put them away after each use. He had a lot of things he had been waiting to do with them!

Our other problems dissolved. The scissors were the key that unlocked the door to our new phase. Our Little Bear has a lot of good ideas and needs the freedom to do them on his own. He was bored!
Along with the scissors, I found there were lots of areas where I was underestimating him, doing for him what he could do for himself, expecting too little, not too much, and controlling rather than equipping him to handle new levels of responsibility. For, with freedom comes responsibility. Along with the scissors came some new chores and a renewal of our expectations of one another. I hadn't meant to be controlling him, he'd just grown into some things he couldn't have handled and didn't need to a few months ago. Along with greater understanding came new tactics and peace.

I must note that not all of the scissor rules were followed. A few days after the debut of his Very Own Scissors, I found a little brother with a new albeit minor haircut and a new spool of ribbon cut to pieces. There were consequences, kind of big ones, and a lot of tears. Not getting to use his Very Own Scissors for Four Whole Days was rather agonizing, but he accepted it as just, though sad, and has lived up to the new responsibility even better since then. The brief reprisal of privileges didn't undo our new mutual esteem or the advance of four-year-old liberty in our house a bit.

Unschooling Our Four Year Old or Backstage with Little Bear

Putting on Birthday Soup for Gibbie's birthday party is such a great example of our learning process that I want to explain how it all came to pass. Gibbie loves pretending. We're always making up a story, or acting out a favorite book. Gibbie lives for the days when we go to our neighbor's house and the kids all put on costumes and do a little "show." (the show is usually mostly Gibbie announcing that the show is going to start in three minutes! a loose string of "tricks" or one well-used story about a lion and a Chinese person and a baby putting out a fire)
I don't know who's idea it was, but we started talking about doing a show for his birthday party. Lots of enthusiasm. I suggested we pick one of his favorite books as the story. We looked at his bookshelf and discussed the possibilities. He picked Little Bear's Birthday Soup. That was maybe a month before his party.
Gradually, the plan developed. I started a page in my planner for his party, and as he had ideas for it, wrote them down. It was my idea to make real curtains for the "stage" and I went and bought an old sheet for the fabric, but it was his idea that they would open by pulling a string. I sewed the curtains while he danced around excitedly one afternoon.
We read the book a lot. We discussed his costume. He and I both made drawings and discussed the features. I found out what he considered the essential features of little bear. He listened to my suggestions too. We tried out various plans for costumes for the other characters, and face paints for everyone. We ran our ideas by Paul and shared excitement with Ezra and friends and family.
We discussed the invitations; what they needed to say, what he wanted them to look like. We started making some by hand. He did drawings of little bear and told me what to write. We worked together, but he became very frustrated that they weren't turning out all the same, and it was taking a long time. I ended up making invitations/playbills by cutting and pasting from photocopies of the book's title page, and copying them. He folded them up and hand-delivered them.
He had a longer list of people who he wanted to come than could fit in our house. We talked about how this could work and decided that the kids who were going to be in the show would come first, get ready, and practice, and the grown-ups and little kids would come later. The little kids would sit on cushions in the front. He had definite ideas about all kinds of specific decorations, activities, and foods. Some he made happen on his own, some I did for him, a lot we worked together on, and some were eventually forgotten or rejected. He helped me clean the whole house for the party, bake the cake, prep the food, set up the props, make decorations and party favors. He designed valentine name tags and tickets for popcorn. The popcorn tickets were a feature he was most proud of. As per his instruction, I carved stamps out of rubber erasers that said, "popcorn!" and "recycle me!" He cut out tickets, stamped them, and planned how they would be used for the guests to order popcorn for the show. For a long time beforehand he dictated little signs advertising the show which he cut out and taped up everywhere.

Some weeks before the party, he stopped wanting to play Little Bear and was reluctant to practice acting it out. I got a little worried, because he had so much invested in this idea. We talked about the need to practice, and kept reading the story. He seemed nervous about being watched and wouldn't even repeat the lines. I resolved to abandon the show and just have games and cake if it looked like it was going to be too stressful. A few days before the show, he practiced it with me in costume, and had practically all his lines down word for word! After that, he wanted to practice every chance he got. We went over it with some of his friends when we could. We worked out some staging, talked about talking loudly and facing the audience. It seems he worked through his nervousness all on his own, and had been getting ready inside-- until he was ready to do it with others.

Of course, not everything worked out. There were some timing and logistical issues, things we would do differently next time. There were some nerves before and after the show, but what actor or host hasn't experienced those? I'm not going to detail the academic skills practiced here, or knowledge gained but I do want to highlight our process: how much it was driven by Gibbie's vision and ideas, how that vision led him to gain new skills, seek out resources, and solve problems; how he was externally supported but also internally motivated; how each step led to new ideas and spurred him on to try new things; how naturally social and interdisciplinary the process was; how much fun we had, and what a thrill of accomplishment!

Real Play

I've been meaning for a while to post a short series of thoughts on education. I can't make any promises about future posts, but today I'd like to share ideas from For the Children's Sake. I feel the title of this book sounds nostalgic, perhaps shrill? Nevertheless, most of author Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's ideas is in line with our developing vision of education; liberal in the classical sense, respectful of the spirit and intellectual capacity of the child, nurturing of health in body, habit, relationship, and sense of wonder. It is the growth of wonder that I believe must be the heart of all true education.
So, a snippet: these will be the words of Macaulay, quoting another educator I have enjoyed exploring, Charlotte Mason.

"I would think that as a good a place as any to start is the concept of play. After the child's needs of love and nourishment are provided for, the child plays.

"There is a little danger in these days of much educational effort that children's play should be crowded out, or, what is from our present point of view the same thing, should be prescribed for and arranged until there is no more freedom of choice about play than about work. We do not say a word against the educational value of games (such as football, basketball, etc.)... But organized games are not play in the sense we have in view. Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry fort, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make.

"She goes on to say that if we do organize their play there is a

"...serious danger. In this matter the child who goes too much on crutches never learns to walk. [or, I would add from our time, the child too much in the exersaucer may never learn to crawl]

"This is a point which needs to be considered further. Play seems so natural (just like anything which is attuned to reality). The phrase 'child's play'... ought to mean that quality of spontaneity, imagination, wholehearted concentration, and joy which should mark all children at play.
but one of the saddest things I know is to watch [older] students look at a group of children, involved for house in satisfying play, and comment, 'I've never seen children playing like that.'

"No? Then weep. "

What does it take to foster real play? Macaulay, I think, is right when she says that education is a life and an atmosphere in the home. If, in the home, kids see people busy, playing, working, making, reading, discussing; if one's ear in the home is not bombarded with the noises of electronic toys, squallings of unhappy children, with either the threats, bribes or unheeded entreaties of adults; if the home is a peaceful, beautiful place; if children are loved, known, listened to, and, when necessary, corrected; such kids will work. Such kids will play!

Reading list of books that have helped me as we shape our family's educational philosophy:
-Grace Llewellyn (Teenage Liberation Handbook, Guerilla Learning)
-The Well-Trained Mind: this book, outlining suggested curricula for a classical trivium may seem the opposite of unschooler Llewellyn as it offers a rigorous, systematic approach. I'm glad to know I've found it for times and areas that we may decide we want that.
-Charlotte Mason: many echo this, but she is a champion of whole books, of real and living books, of being out in nature, of telling stories, of growing virtues like a garden in the light of love and gentleness.
-Maria Montessori: "Understanding the Human Being" helped me attend to my kids as infants in a deeper way. I love the series of pamphlets called "Montessori speaks to Parents," and have learned much from her writings about observing my children and about the developmental needs of people.

The picture above is from last fall at Glendalough--a great state park we visited and highly recommend. They have gnarled oak groves, lots of waterside trails, and prairie restorations. That's the day before the first snowstorm.

Name That Plant

At Purlieu, I went back and forth between the forest and my stack of guide books. We made a last minute stop at the big library on our way out of town, which cost us a parking ticket. It was worth it. I got a stack of field guides. They were invaluable in helping me learn more about our land and its inhabitants. I was amazed how many times I had to recheck my theory on a plant I'd found before I could correctly identify it.
None of these are uncommon plants at all, and I think of myself as pretty well-versed in the local forest for a city girl. This just shows how out of touch I am with the world around me; I've been coming to this land since I was a kid, and never noticed these plants, which are abundant on our land, until this trip. I had no idea what they were.
Looking them up was a fun little puzzle to solve, counting petals and looking in different sections of the books, smelling and tasting parts of the plant until I had found out who it was.
It's fascinating, learning not only the name, but how each little one works, how it spreads, what people have used and enjoyed them for.
Gibbie got so used to me dropping to the ground in amazement that he would spontaneously do it too--"look at this!" he would say, "it's a cerota." Nodding seriously, "It makes water in it's leaves." I love that he does this. He's thinking about how we interpret nature, and joining right in. Soon enough knowledge and experiences with the plants will catch up with desire to participate. I'll bet to him a lot of what I say sounds just crazy, and often he can't see a thing that's being pointed out to him, like the wild turkeys out the car window, or the skunk he just missed when walking with Papa in the garden.
What I really love is that this little person of but three years has already learned so much. Many different plants he can identify in various seasons, though they look quite different, and he has a lot of favorite little flowers and leaves he can find to nibble on.
Or, pointing out into the forest, "Did you see that? It's a deercat. Right there, in that tree." He also spotted the rare leafcat. "It eats leaves."
Notes on the plants: the two photos of the pink and white ones are not of the same flowers. The flower in the first photo, seems to grow just one flower each, and the stems and low leaves are remarkably soft, covered in downy fur. The second photo features similar flowers, but as you can see, there is a small cluster of them, and a pair of leaves with parallel veins.
The top flowers, the white and purple ones, do very well if transplanted into a garden, where in the loose, fertile soil they grow to giant versions of their forest selves.
The fourth photo, with the white-veined leaves, the leaves are rather thick, almost leathery. The last picture the drying up berries, are growing on a short, pretty tree. These also grow in the city. I guess the birds don't like them much, since they still have lots of berries now in the spring. I have so much to learn!

Mine to Give

As Gibbie is three years old now with Ezra almost two(!), and soaking up the world like sponges, becoming more and more themselves every day; as we encounter new ethical dilemmas to find some way to work through with them; as we chart our own course through this sometimes-weary world, we are thinking about education. About how we learn things, yea how we learned to learn. About love and how we love each other. About character, how it develops. About society and culture, how we participate in them, how we contribute and help to sustain, and when we withdraw from them. As we have watched good friends choose schools for their dear little ones and as we have spent a year trying out preschool, we have been thinking about those things that are ours to give our children, those things that are our responsibility to bequeath, and those things that are beyond us entirely. What must we let them choose themselves? Are there paths cannot or must not travel with them, even now? What can we give them to help them chart their course?
At first I thought, well, I want them to love reading, art, every book that I love, camping, lakes and poetry and rain. Going deeper, we want them to love people, to care for the land, to think hard, to feel deeply, to follow Jesus and to serve the poor.
But already, we have wished for them many things which they must choose themselves, with all their will, if they are to have them at all! Alas, we can't shape them like clay, they are not so much ours as that! More on this in another post.

At the same time, they need so much from us, if they are to have a fighting chance; more than we can give, small as we are. Each one needs so much love, such intimacy. To know by daily experience that we listen to their voice, that we look at them with love, that we are watching over them, to pick them up when they fall. We let them watch us forgiving and being forgiven, working through disappointments and anger and sorrow. They will see us pray and work and listen. Sing and make, fix and worship.
Then with, God's help, they will somehow, between Him and their own selves and us, learn and become truly themselves.

Book Review: North Country Spring

North Country Spring by Reeve Lindbergh, illustrated by Liz Sivertson is one of my favorite spring time picture books.
The text is lyrical, rhythmic verse in the vocative, calling each kind of animal to come out for spring. My favorite stanza, and a good example of the singing voice of this poem, reads,

Strut out, tall moose, from your stand of spruce.
Walk around, feel the ground, let your bones get loose.

Have you seen a moose? Have you seen a gangly young bull after a long winter? She really uses the cadence of her verse to describe the specific gait of each animal. Compare the above lines with the following:

Lope out, wild wolves, come out and prowl.
It's a fine shiny night for a yip and a howl.

This combined with the painting of wolves, under a large moon, with long shadows on the yet-snowy ground, gives such an impression of the pace and gait of a pack of wolves. I love the way the sounds of the words used to describe the wolves are so wolfish themselves. A wolf wouldn't be a wolf without both doggy yips and detours in his path; and that wild, sustained lunar chorus.
The pictures fall right in line with this.; lush, pastiche-y and expressive paintings. They show just enough detail to paint a personality--the tumlbey-ness of bear cubs, the cupped form of fluffed up chickadees on a branch. These images are every bit as lyrical as the text.
I would like to emphasize that picture books are not only for children. Long before mine came along, I haunted the children's section of the bookstore. As an adult, a reader, and an artist I built my fine picture library book by book out of admiration for the fine work coming out of this genre. There is a lot of twaddle in kids' books, but discarding that, the best of writing and illustrating for children is of the highest quality. I wonder if this may not be because children read for the sheer joy of it, so those who write and illustrate best for them have not the pretensions that drag down much adult literature. Paul and I often still use children's non-fiction as a starting point for research, when we need an overview of a new topic. I often read young adult novels and children's stories for my own pleasure reading.
At the sustainable neighborhoods conference, I attended a most excellent workshop on community gardening with youth and one important point I absorbed was that our children need a sense of place. This articulates for me why we keep reading books that sing of our seasons, our plants, our woods and waters and animals, here in Minnesota. Ruth, a founder of my beloved Swede Hollow Cafe's wonderful community children's garden talked about how we must teach our children to read the land here, to know it's story and understand its ways. She said she has found in her work with Twin Cities children that they may know something about the rainforest, but almost never know anything about our own mighty Mississippi.
We're reading it as a clarion call to spring--come, come, wherever you are! Come out from the corners, come out of your lair!

Francis' Papa Makes Coffee or the Winter Picnic

So. We're still mid-winter. Off-and-on colds and viruses ranging around like lions, seeking whom they may devour. Dry air. Not much outdoor time. Oh, we try! We bundle up, we go for walks (oh, foolish mortals that we are!). I try to leave an extra ten minutes going somewhere for Gibbie to play in the snow once he's all bundled up.
I have never longed for spring so devotedly. Once we can play outside for more than twenty minutes at a time, not dancing with the danger of frostbite, nay--in no more than boots and a jacket--oh, will we play long and hard outside!
Anyway, with, optimistically two months of the off-again-on-again romance between Winter and that seductress Spring, how will we survive without eating eachother's heads?
Books!
Gibbie calls, "Mama, I'm dressing up as Francis! Do you want to dress up as Francis' mama? sweetly) This book you haven't read. It's called, Francis' Papa Makes Coffee."
What, you haven't heard of Francis' Papa makes Coffee? What about Francis Goes to the Zoo?
I've mentioned our beloved Francis books before. It's hard to remember that Francis isn't an actual member of our family. She's a badger, actually. A fictional one. Our favorite Francis books include: Bread and Jam for Francis, Bedtime for Francis, A Baby Sister for Francis, and A Bargain for Francis. Wait! That's almost all of them. Yup. We sure do love our Francis.

They are invaluable for reading again and again and again. Well written, clever, well-timed little stories. But you won't find Francis' Papa Makes Coffee or Francis Goes to the Zoo at the library, as they're Gibbie's own creation.
Gibbie has begun a sort of literary vamping. He makes up stories based on his favorite books.
Gibbie "dresses up as Francis." This often doesn't include any tangible costume at all. He mentally puts on Francis, and tells us about it. He also informs us if we are required to dress up as anyone. Francis' Papa, say, or any other real or fictional person we know and love. Sometimes he "dresses up" Ezra as Gloria, Francis' little sister. True fans of Francis will appreciate that sometimes Albert, Ida, the ubiquitous Thelma, and even Harold occaisionally show up too.
Francis Goes to the Zoo, the most popular title around our house today, underwent some major plot development today. It goes something like this: Gibbie and Ezra get into the "Adventure Box" (they made up that name--I swear! It is, of course, just a big cardboard box.) They usually also toss in some blankets or cloths and stuffed animals. Then follow endless invitations to Mama and Papa, who morph into Francis at Gibbie's will, (yes, he changes characters faster than Superman) to come and look at the animals. They are enticed to pick up and admire the animals (note that to adult eyes, the animals are Gibbie and Ezra). Apparently, when Francis goes to the zoo, she can pick up whatever real animals she wants. Today, amazingly, she got to handle :
-a real live, "puffed-up ball animal" who stared round and round,
-as well as a fluffy animal that was very very soft,
-a baby polar bear,
-and two quite wild and rousty animals who couldn't agree on who got a certain corner of their exhibit and whether that animal would be lying down or sitting.

That's the game: pretending to look at and touch and hold animals in a zoo (now we all know what Gibbie's dream zoo would look like) or pretending to be a friendly zoo animal just dying to be picked up and petted by a locquacious and rhyming little badger.

I like to do my own motherly version of literary vamping. It is so easy to take any good picture book and pick out some part of it that we can play out or learn more about, often with little or no preparation. This forms the basis of my winter-anti-boredom-toolkit.
These pictures are actually from more than a month ago. In Best Friends for Francis, and actual favorite Russell and Lillian Hoban story, Francis and company go out for the most delightful picnic outing. This has been the seed for countless such outings of our own. Elements from the story that we like to include: a picnic hamper blanket, a wide variety of food, and spontaneously composed songs. We were out for a walk near some small woods on a relatively balmy winter day, and decided to eat our packed lunch, outing style. This really wasn't fancy at all, just a thermos of warm milk, peanut butter sandwiches, oranges, and a blanket; but it was so delightful. Paul was right there with us, but as usual, sigh, is not pictured as he was behind the camera. It also really wasn't uncomfortably cold! We were dressed quite warmly in many layers of wool, warmed by our hike, and had our lovely outing blanket to sit upon. On a winter's day in the twenties, (Farenheit; cold enough to be comfortable but not wet) I highly reccomend it!


So does Ezra!

Do you "get" Poetry?

I've happened upon a few very good guides to poetry. I'd like to remember them for when the kids are older, as navigational guides. I'm thinking ahead to how we'll teach them all kinds of things, and starting a system for filing books I might like to read with them later.

Anyway, these books might help with what bothers and intimidates so many people about poetry. We know what to do with a story, how to read it; but we get lost when we enter a poem. You know, "what does it mean?"
I very much myself enjoyed reading The Roar from the Other Side by Suzanne U. Clark. I might use it with the kids in the late-grade school years. She nicely explains the standard list of literary devices, giving excersises for students. It made me want to take up my own pen. She includes great texts by new poets I'd never heard of, as well as some you'd expect.
I've just begun John Ciardi's How does a poem mean? This volume may be appreciated by anyone who has asked, perplexed, of any poem or all poems, "what does it mean?" It might work as a good textbook, denser than The Roar from the Other Side. By textbook, understand that I mean, as I said above, a good guide, not a dry manual. There are many unfortunate textbooks out there, useful for completing workbooks and putting one to sleep before big exams. A good text is written by one who knows and loves their territory. Like a good wilderness guide. When I was in staff training to become a guide for wilderness canoe trips, our guide was a man who knew the lakes we paddled. He knew our equipment. He knew how to navigate. He knew what we needed to learn.
He also loved the land. He swam in the (cold!) water each morning upon waking. I noticed, almost upon meeting him, that he loved the words for the animals, history, and plants of the lakes country. He spoke the names of things deliberately. There is a joy in the particular nomenclature of a place, words that record its particularity. He sang, as we paddled across long lakes.


A singing guide is one who entices his students to follow in his steps. Likewise, these volumes on poetry are each written by a poet. Who but a woodsman could lead others through the wilderness? Similarly, can one become even a decent reader of poetry without writing a few? Though I loved to read as a child and adolescent, I was a terrible writer. Writing wasn't fun, because it never worked out well. But poetry is a key that can unlock some doors.
In my review of the first semester of my ninth grade english class, taught by my first good english teacher, and one of my best, I, in typical nerdly fashion, profusely thanked her for opening poetry to me and even more lavishly thanked her for not making us write poems. The first excercise she assigned the next semester was a big batch of original poems. Ten poems, with no other instructions or limits; ten original poems.
This was so good for me. After dousing us with a sea of all types of the poetic form, she simply pushed us off the dock. And so I learned to swim.
Well, Mary Oliver, a quintessential American poet; accessible, accomplished, and delightful, makes a good guide for writing verse. It's hard! She presents different forms for metered verse which will build the literary muscles of tawny poetic jocks and novice slow-pokes alike.