Jeannine Atkins

Whenever a student mentions a memory of a parent reading a book, I smile as if that mom or dad just slipped into the room. There seems to be a pretty direct line between those happy moments and my students’ interest in looking back. Rereading Winnie-the-Pooh, I remember my dad changing his voice for the characters, as my brother, sister, and I cuddled close. But like my students, there’s much of the text I never noticed or forgot. This time through, I took note not just of Pooh’s poems embedded in the prose, but how much the humble bear has to say about “this writing business. Pencils and what-not.”

We get a glimpse into Pooh’s process when “he was trying to make up a piece of poetry about fir-cones, because there they were, lying about on each side of him, and he felt singy.” He studies the fir-cone, feeling something ought to rhyme with it, and when he fails, steers himself to other sounds. Shortly before the “Expotition to the North Pole,” he composes a song, “singing the third and fourth lines before I have time to think of them.”  In House at Pooh Corner, Pooh asks Piglet what he thinks of a poem, and Piglet objects to one word. Pooh explains that this word wanted to come, so he let it. “It is the best to way to write poetry, letting things come.”

It’s tough for poets to find eager audiences, and Pooh keeps us company in scenes such as the one in which he approaches Kanga and asks, “I don’t know if you are interested in Poetry at all?”

“Hardly at all,” said Kanga.

Pooh tries to push on, “Talking of Poetry…” but Kanga is more interested in Baby Roo, who busily practices jumps.

In the last chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh, a party is held to celebrate Pooh’s rescue of Piglet. When Pooh opens the present “He nearly fell down, he was so pleased. It was a Special Pencil Case. .. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils, and India-rubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong, and a ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches marked on the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches anything was, and Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils for saying special things in blue and red and green. And all these lovely things were in little pockets of their own in a Special Case which shut with a click when you clicked it.”

I nearly fell down, too. Who wouldn’t want to write with a case like that? I think I must at least capitalize Pencil.

For more Friday Poetry post, please visit Dori Reads.