Childhood Bookshelf
By Joyce Sidman
In anticipation of writing this piece, and in honor of Jack’s wonderful gift, I went to my bookshelf and slid out the only two books I’ve saved from own childhood: Mud Pies and Other Recipes, by Marjorie Winslow, illustrated by Eric Blegvad (1961), and The Bat-Poet, by Randall Jarrell, illustrated by Maurice Sendak (1963).
It’s impossible to say what shapes a person, but when I open these beloved, well-worn covers, a path to the past unrolls before me like a sunny meadow trail. Mud Pies was pure delight for a child of the early 60’s—subversive “recipes” for the young hostess who doesn’t mind getting dirty. “Pie-Throwing Pies,” for instance, urges children to “Follow the first step in making Mud Pies, only make it gloppier. Throw.” It isn’t poetry per se, but the tongue-in-cheek text is full of wordplay and humor. Did I revel in mud as a child? I certainly did. And while my mother labored to concoct dinner menus (and civilize her three daughters), we were out in the yard preparing spreads like this “Wedding Banquet,” which included:
Boiled Buttons
Leaves en Brochette
Roast Rocks
Mold Moss Salad
Mud Pies à la Mud
Mums ‘61
How did my staid mother know I would love that book so much? And how did she know that The Bat-Poet, given for my ninth birthday, would lay down a blueprint for my writing life? The story (part prose, part poems) follows a bat who’s curious about the daytime world and stays awake to capture its creatures in poetry—the quick, rust-colored chipmunk, the boastful mockingbird. Reading it again for the umpteenth time, I was startled to find that Jarrell begins the book with a human narrator who invites us into the story: “Once upon a time, there was a bat—a little light brown bat, the color of coffee with cream in it. . . . I’d go in and out my front door in the daytime and see him hanging upside down on the porch.” Only in the second paragraph does he gently shift us to the bat’s point of view, and we never hear from the narrator again.
As a child, I was a social being who loved making mud pies with friends. But I was also that bat, waking each day to discover new layers of my world, grappling with its beauty and its danger. Alert to the scents, smells, and colors around me, and reaching for words to describe what I felt. I realize now that as an adult, I also became the narrator, inviting others into the story.
Isn’t that the essence of poetry—to use language to wake ourselves up? To find meaning through surprise and wonder? I fervently hope so. And I hope that, like the little coffee-colored bat, we will always be reaching for words to capture what we feel.
