Well as Robert Frost said, “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. And a children’s poem begins in delight and ends in delight.” And I haven’t heard it described any better than that. There really is a world of difference between adult poetry and children’s poetry.
I think generally speaking adult poets think that, they think of children’s poetry as sort of a cultural demimonde, not quite a legitimate enterprise, and I think that’s too bad, I mean we’re the ones after all if we’re any good are the ones who are sending these young readers onto possibly reading their work.
So I think our mission has to be an important one.
Lucille Clifton, a well known African American poet once said, “I can’t tell you what good poetry is, but I can tell you a good poem when I see it.” And I think you know, I can’t improve on that. I mean poetry is beautiful speech, as Frost said, “It’s a momentary stay against confusion.”
It’s a blind date with enchantment. There are so many, hundreds of definitions for poetry and I think those, most of those definitions apply to children’s poetry as well.
I really must say a word against what is commonly referred to as giggle poetry, because giggle poetry is written by poet’s who think they must include burps and nose picking and stuff like that to get down to, to speak to children, and that’s exactly what they’re doing, they’re writing to the lowest common denominator. So none of that poetry in my opinion deserves to even be called poetry.