Most of the poetry we publish in Stone Soup is free verse. Free verse is the most prose-like form of poetry. It is very popular amongst adult poets and it is also very common in American schools. Free verse may by rhymed or unrhymed. What defines it is that it is unmetered. Walt Whitman was the American poet who popularized the form. Here is an example by Whitman. This poem is called The Noisless Patient Spider. “A noiseless, patient spider, I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself; Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them. “And you, O my Soul, where you stand, Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them; Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul. As free verse, Whitman is not constrained by meter or by rhyme. The poem consists of two grammatical sentences, one for each stanza. I’m not going to parse the poem here. If you are interested, look up the poem in Google Books. There are many commentaries. I’ll offer you this commentary on The Noiseless Patient Spider for those of you who want to delve further in the poem. For my purposes here, I will just say that by choosing free verse Whitman is able to focus on other things — to say things he couldn’t say if otherwise constrained by form. The language is poetic — .. “till the ductile anchor hold;/Till the gossamer thread you fling…” This is not prose. The great 20th-century American poet, Robert Frost, rejected this style of poetry for himself. Famously, in an 1935 speech at the Milton Academy he said, “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” We at Stone Soup believe that this is a style that more easily lets children get someplace deep with their poems. If you want to think of it as Robert Frost did — then its a style of poetry that gives the young poet a handicap. It lets young poets focus on content and language but doesn’t impose an overly consisting of structured meter. Anyone with a free verse poem to share by a child is encouraged to do so in the comments.
Join the Stone Soup Social Media Team
Contact William Rubel: william@stonesoup.com Stone Soup was founded in 1973. Through our magazine, Stone Soup, and through anthologies of children’s writing, we are the leading publishers of children’s creative work for homes and schools. We are now tying to increase our social media presence in order to reach a broader audience for the children we publish. Stone Soup is looking for people interested in children’s creativity to join its social media team. Whether your interest is writing by children, children’s art, child composers, child photographers or filmmakers, or your interest is more in the pedagogical side of things, we invite you to share your passion under the Stone Soup banner. Blogging: We offer bloggers an opportunity to write and be heard. Whether you might blog once a month, once week, or every day, we can fit you in to our new blogging program. If you like to write and want to communicate with a larger audience, then consider blogging for Stone Soup. We are looking for teachers, homeschoolers, anyone who has something to say about child art education in the largest sense of the term. Your blog can provide a venue for publishing creative work by students and talking about it, YouTube videos, and more. You will also be free to promote your own work including other blogs you write for, books you’ve written, workshops you lead, etc. Twitter: What we are looking for a few people, each with focused interests, who will Tweet for Stone Soup at least a few times per week. As examples, if you are interested in child composers, we’d like you to Tweet child composers at the Stone Soup Twitter feed. If child filmmakers interest you, please search out information and Tweet it for Stone Soup. Teaching methods, great writing programs, writing by children that you find online and like, this and more is what we would like to be offering within the Stone Soup Twitter feed. Facebook: Facebook sits somewhere between Tweeting and Blogging. If the Facebook format is one that appeals to you, let us know when you get in touch. We are looking for people who will write Facebook posts that engage with our audience. If you you’d like to talk, please write to me, William Rubel, at william@stonesoup.com. Thank you.
Poem by a Child, Age 12, Published in 1913 in St. Nicholas Magazine
Poem by a twelve-year-old published in 1913. This poem, A Song Of Home, is a poem written by a child age 12. Originally published in 1913 in the children’s magazine St. Nicholas it is a poem from another time. The poem starts, “Oh, pretty mate of the crimson breast,/Do you remember your little nest….” The poem goes on to speak of the robin living and loving in the cherry tree. I think to better appreciate this poem it is helpful to recall that it was written when writers of natural history routinely wrote about animals, birds, and insects as if they were characters with human attributes. You can open nearly any natural history from the early decades of the 20th century to find engaging stories about the creatures being discussed. It isn’t science writing as we have come to think of it, but it is what makes even encyclopedic works like Dawson’s birds of California (1923) refreshing reading today. The engagement natural history writers had with the creatures they studied as characters in life dramas informs classic works of children’s literature such as Wind in the Willows (1908). I think it is in this literary context that a poem such as A Song of Home should be understood. I realize that the language of this poem with its rhymes and its more ordered rhythm can be distancing. I suggest asking your students or your child to close their eyes when you read to them. Read it a couple times. Let the sound of the language speak for itself. A SONG OF HOME by Evadne Scott (age 12) Oh, pretty mate of the crimson breast, Do you remember your little nest, Far o’er the fields for miles and miles, Where the blue Pigeon River smiles? Soon I know you’ll be on the wing, To the old home, to build and sing; To live and love in the cherry-tree, With tiny birdlings, one, two, three. Carry for me a message dear – A song of home – and sing it near The window where I used to play, When you sing your song at break of day. Take it back to the cherry-tree Take it to your nestlings three; In among the blossoms sing, In among the flowers of spring. Back to my loved ones, dear as ever, Back to the old home by the river; Let me burden your tiny wing With the memories I long to bring.
