FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   >>  
mall virtues are rarely more than therapeutic, and direct myself only to that specialized but most important category--poems written by a skilled and adult poet but addressed to an audience of children who are likely to be read to until they are skillful enough to read the same verses for themselves. The dangers for the poet in addressing so composite an audience are enormous: cuteness, coyness, archness and condescension are only the most obvious ones. Some great writers of children's verse--Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear--have successfully hedged themselves against these dangers by insistent comedy and parody (Carroll's "serious" children's verse is maudlin and embarrassing). By this means they have contrived what the child will take as lovely, unintimidating, mysterious, rational nonsense, and what the adult will recognize as a travesty or burlesque of something very edgy indeed. Thus, Lear's "The Dong with the Luminous Nose" and Carroll's "Jabberwocky" are, respectively, bright and disguised versions of gothic terror and misery on the one hand, and medieval knightly exploit on the other, both rendered innocuous for the nursery and ridiculous for the adult. The risks of seriousness have been successfully avoided. The poetry of Walter de la Mare sings boldly and beautifully without any of these hedges and condescensions. His work has the honest candor of the border ballads and the fairy tales: as well as unmitigated joys, they are full of the dangers and horrors and sorrows that every child soon knows to be part of the world, however vainly parents try to veil them. A child's curiosity about the forbidden will insist on being satisfied; and better by verse than otherwise. This poetry is also musically astute and demanding; it may surprise and alert the parental reader; and it has its share of archaisms and poeticisms, which, contrary to adult surmise, bemuse and fascinate children. And it must be admitted that it is also relentlessly British; but then, so is much good children's literature. As a poet (he was also a gifted novelist and short-story writer) de la Mare was praised by T. S. Eliot ("the delicate, invisible web you wove") and by W. H. Auden ("there are no good poems which are only for children"). His technical and linguistic skills are not, as Auden rightly points out, a matter of indifference to children, who are in the very business of learning language, as well as other facts of life, and who are pa
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   >>  



Top keywords:

children

 
Carroll
 

dangers

 
successfully
 

audience

 

poetry

 
demanding
 

astute

 

musically

 

unmitigated


parental

 
ballads
 

reader

 

surprise

 

parents

 

vainly

 

forbidden

 
curiosity
 

satisfied

 

horrors


insist

 

sorrows

 

technical

 

linguistic

 

delicate

 
invisible
 
skills
 

language

 
learning
 

business


indifference
 

rightly

 

points

 

matter

 
admitted
 

relentlessly

 

British

 

fascinate

 
bemuse
 

archaisms


poeticisms

 
contrary
 

surmise

 

writer

 

praised

 
novelist
 

literature

 
border
 

gifted

 

writers