"The trouble isn't making poems, the trouble's finding somebody that will listen to them": Negotiating a Place for Poetry in Children's Literature Studies

Abstract

No one needs a reminder of how prevalent poetry is in children's lives, ranging from nursery rhymes to adver- tisement jingles to song lyrics to poetry in the classroom. We know that rhyme, meter, and imagery help discipline memory, prepare toddlers for both speaking and reading, urge young readers to reflect on personal and public con- cerns, and direct students to the beauty of language, its arbitrariness, and its versatility. Yet, here in the United States, we seem to take poetry for granted. Unquestion- ably, we live in anti-poetic times. Poetry has become dis- pensable in an age that values information over art, and consequently fewer and fewer of our teachers seem equipped to teach poetry to our children. We have become shortsighted, paying less and less critical and pedagogical attention to children's poetry. We editors of this special issue of the Quarterly wish that there were no special issue. That is, we would like to think that children's poetry, no matter how marginalized within our culture, is embraced as a full member of our family of children's literatures. We wish that the Quarterly were being inundated with essays on children's poetry. Sadly, this is not the case. Twenty years ago, Alethea Helbig described the neglect of children's poetry within the pro- fession: