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
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