[Roger Slater]

This is How I Feel

Prickly,
pearish,
sometimes

bearish,
sickly,
sleepy,
salt

and pepperish,
cheeky,
peachy,
leaf

and faeryish,
duckish,

puckish,
suddenly

grumpish,
sunnish,
moony,
plummy

luscious,

sweetly
deeply

loved

and precious.
.
.

[Roger Slater]

Pat Lewis:

I harp often to kids, though never enough in my opinion, about the importance of using strong personified verbs in writing poetry or prose. I think it was John Berryman who praised Hemingway by saying he “verbed for forty years.” On the other hand, “the adjective is the enemy of the noun,” Voltaire wrote. Mark Twain put it even more strongly: “If you catch an adjective, kill it.” Those sentiments appeal to me. For that reason, I’m afraid, I am predisposed not to give high marks to a list of adjectives masquerading as [this poem].

[Jayne Osborn]

'pearish', 'grumpish' and 'salt and pepperish' all sound too old to me, to be included in a children's poem. I immediately thought of a middle-aged woman who's sometimes grumpy, with a pear-shaped figure and greying (peppery) hair, but who is loved by her family.

Very fruity - pear, peach and plum all mentioned; are children that much 'into' fruit? I doubt it.

It's quite a pleasant little ditty, but that's all it is. It's like a poem that's been written as a warm-up exercise in a writers' workshop session... in about thirty seconds. Sorry to be so negative, but I don't think it fits the bill for a child's poem.

[Marybeth Rua-Larsen]

I don't mind the adjectives and listing, and the stanza breaks add interest and a bit of tension. I can see kids enjoying those aspects. I rather liked "salt and pepperish." For me, this starts stronger than it ends.

Marybeth

[Richard Meyer]

It's an interesting exercise, and here I echo Jayne's observation about the verse seeming like a writing exercise. Some of the rhymes and wordplay are fun (pearish/bearish) while others don't work as well (grumpish/sunnish). I think the value of this poem would be to use it as an exercise with children, as a pattern for them to write such a poem about themselves using descriptive words.

Richard

[Catherine Chandler]

I like the sound of this poem a lot. But I'm wondering if there's a need for the comma after "Prickly". I think the line break would be sufficient for the double-entendre. In fact, why put in all those commas, anyway? I think it goes on a tad too long. Love the ending (though "precious" has negative connotations in the po-world ).

[Chris O'Carroll]

I’ve preached the anti-adverb-and-adjective sermon on more than one occasion, so I know there’s wisdom there. But we mustn’t warp a useful guideline into a fetish. Not all modifiers are created equal. You could certainly argue that the last five lines of this poem simply tell about the speaker’s feelings, without showing the reader any concrete images. But many of the descriptive words and phrases here -- “salt/and pepperish,” “leaf/and faeryish,” “sunnish,” “moony” -- are compressed similes that vivid up the poem nicely.

[Roger Slater]

Yes, I think the poem has a unique approach. The admonition about avoiding adjectives isn't based on the idea that there is something inherently wrong with adjectives, of course, but on the way they often tend to be used, especially in bad or lazy writing. All too often, adjectives are used to rescue a poorly chosen noun, or to modify a noun that doesn't really need to be modified, but here one of the whole "points" about the poem is to celebrate the adjectives and to exult in their sounds and shades of meaning.

I sort of wish the poem went on a bit longer, frankly, and piled on more fun adjectives and rhythms and rhymes, though perhaps I'd give up my need for more if the poem were found in a collection of similarly styled poems whose combined effect was to train the reader how to read this kind of poem, which doesn't merely latch onto a familiar ballad meter or rhyming tet couplets that readers are prepared in advance to respond to.

[Max Goodman]

I can't place the voice. If this is a child speaking of her feelings, the ending doesn't ring true. Not that a child wouldn't feel that way, but this doesn't sound to me like a child's way of expressing it. If this is a parent speaking of his feelings, pardon the cynicism, but I can't see a child being very interested. Self-centeredness is a natural part of childhood.

I'm glad we've got at least one example of free verse in this bake-off. The children's magazines I used to try to write for were absolutely dominated by it (most of it not even employing rhyme, as this poem does), the funny, rhyming, metered verse that I always think of when I think of children's verse being quite the anomaly. I hope my mentioning that won't hijack this thread. If it's a topic of interest, maybe we should discuss it elsewhere.

[Spindleshanks]

I think the title may be misleading. I initially took the poem to represent the way the N feels about him/herself, which may be correct. I'm leaning, though, toward the view that it represents the parent's feeling toward the child—"This Is How I Feel (about you)." I would like to think that's the author's intention, because it renders the poem a tad more charming in my view.

That said, it's well down my favourites list. A little too precious for my taste.