Bedtime Stories
 

Bedtime Story

Pyjama’d, nightied, they are read to,
snuggled close, or independently alert.
The Baudelaires’ unfortunate events unravel.
Hogwarts weaves a family for Harry.
Boyhood and a Bear are said goodbye to.

The boy absorbs and uses it to grow.
His sister smiles because she knows, she knows.
The youngest bites her toes.

The youngest settles back
and blithely bites her toes.

I have so many questions, Joe. This is me, picking your brain...
Who's doing the reading?
How many kids are there?
Why is "Bear" capitalized?
What's happening between the reading of the bear story (Winnie the Pooh, right?) and the saying goodbye to it? Why say goodbye?
Which ones are snuggling and which ones are independently alert, and why aren't they all snuggling?
What is the boy absorbing and using?
What does the sister know?
"The" implies one sister. Is the youngest also a sister? Or someone else?
Is the youngest biting her own toes or the sister's toes?

I want to know more --- so much more!

Other observations:
"Blithely" seems like a very non childlike word.
You have two pretty passive situations (being read to; said goodbye to)

Just some food for thought.

annie

Thanks for taking the trouble to pick at this Annie. It has had a lot of “looks” but yours is the only comment so far. I did think that might be the case. It is more or less a doodle to myself capturing elements of many story-times with my kids. It simply references some well known children's books and gnomically describes how my children heard them. So it is rather slight and doesn’t give the reader much purchase. I could say much more about who and what is going on (eg the allusion to the last chapter of the House at Pooh Corner, “in which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an enchanted place and we leave them there”). Perhaps I should develop it. But I was pleased enough with the sound and the feel to wonder whether there was enough in it to spark recognition in others. I’m quite happy to hold onto it as my own family keepsake.

Thanks again

Joe

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Hi Joe, This feels rather dashed off without much effort put into the poetical aspect of the imagery you conjure.

I wondered, too, about the number of children being read to (2? 3?)

And I can't figure out why the final couplet sounds like a rehashing of the two lines that precede it.

It's fine to keep as is as a family keepsake, but I am left wondering what the point of the poem is. I am assuming it is to capture the memories of reading at bedtime to your children, so I think there is fertile ground there to develop it. But as is, it doesn't take me anywhere.

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Well, I rather enjoyed it for what it is, Joe, which is a very sweet and very simple evocation of bedtime stories. I didn't have any of the questions that seemed to trouble Annie. It seemed clear to me that a parent (presumably the speaker) is doing the reading, that there are 3 children (girl, boy, girl in age order), that Bear is capitalised because Milne would often capitalise for comic effect (Bear of Very Little Brain), that the "goodbye" refers to the famously tearjerking ending of the final Pooh story, that the boy is probably the one snuggling and the eldest girl is independently alert because she is older (too old to snuggle), that the boy is absorbing life lessons from the stories while the older girl enjoys the stories but feels she "knows" the lessons/narrative conventions already and that the youngest girl is biting her own toes, as toddler age children do. "Blithely" is a word from the adult narrator, it seems, and I also liked the repetition at the end, where the phrase is extended giving a sense of consolidation and "settling down" to sleepiness. Very sweet.

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Thanks for "reading" this to me Mark. I see exactly what you're saying and the poem is now reading more clearly. I guess I just wasn't ready for a bedtime story — ha! But now I'm all snuggled into it. It's a three-headed poem where children's stories of varying ages are floated through the lines of the poem: Lemony Snickets, Harry Potter and Pooh.


And with my new insight the final couplet's redundancy works beautifully.

Thanks for the insight.


(Not sure about the discrepancy between the thread title and the poem title)

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FWIW, the girls' reactions I experience (with the speaker interpreting the older girl's smile); the boy's I can't experience.

Jim. Your first reaction was perfectly reasonable. It is only a faint sketch, and may not sustain much inspection. It wasn’t dashed off though, and I’m glad Mark helped draw you in a little closer.

Thanks Mark, Except for birth order, (boy, girl, girl) which was not strictly deducible from the poem, full marks for accuracy. And in fact you managed to cast light on something I was unclear of myself. I liked the repetition in the final couplet but couldn’t really say why it seemed to work. Your seeing at as a kind of “Now I am sitting comfortably, you may begin” cushion plumping prelude feels right.

“Blithe” tends to go with “blithe indifference” these days, but used to mean “carefree” (as in blithe spirit). When you see a 5 year old casually put her foot to her mouth as if it were the easiest thing in the world then both senses seem to work.

Jim I called it “bedtime stories” plural in the thread because the scene is a composite of many evening readingss. The kids were close in age but still several years apart and not all stories had a shared appeal. I changed it to “bedtime story” in the poem title because it sounds more inviting ie you might actually be getting a story rather than an essay about the oeuvre.

Max, I’m glad you liked the girl’s line. You are probably right hat I could work harder on the boy’s reaction. An earlier version had it as “The boy enjoys, but doesn’t like to show” which may give a a better sense of his personality and I might go back to it or something like it.

Thanks all

Joe

I'm definitely with Mark on this one. It works. And clearly three children.

I really like lines 3-5 especially, and the ending is just right for a bedtime story.

Cheers

David

I think I should have worked out that the first girl is the eldest, simply because she knows, she knows. Eldest girls do, don't they? I have one myself.