My First

My friend Bakeem reminded me of my first poetry love with a Facebook post today.

When I was four years old, my great-grandmother gave me my first book of poetry- When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne. I still own it to this day. When you open the cover of the book, there is part of a faded date stamp on the left side. 14 May in red, from when I would play librarian as a little girl. Great- Grandmother Lu-Lu's fancy script takes up the first half of the right side:

Jessica Ann Finney Christmas - 1975

from

Great Grandpa &

Great Grandmother

Oh, how I traced those swirls and loops as a little girl! They encompassed a rather old-fashioned sense of femininity for me, made me envision tea parties and fancy hats with feathers and fine china. 

My idea of proper tea attire then

My idea now ;)

In later years the simplicity of the inscription and the word choice amplified a lot of who my great grandparents were. "Great Grandpa," the first William of three generations of "Billy B's", was a silly, fun man from what I can recall. I remember him taking out his false teeth and chasing me with them. When I think of him there is warmth and laughter. There is a family joke about him waiting for cars on the road before turning onto a road- if there was a car in sight, he would wait. It drove everyone crazy, everyone but me. I remember his funeral, my first, as a mildly sad but mostly confusing affair. Somehow I knew the basics of cremation and that he was going to be cremated. I had visions of his body being pushed into a coffin-shaped, grey metal furnace. It seemed neat and tidy to me rather than gruesome.

Grandma, Great-Grandma, Mom, and little alien me

"Great Grandmother" was much more formal in script and in person. She had a proud stature and always seemed well put together to me. She had a bedroom full of fancy jewelry, famed soft, silver hair, stories of moving west as a girl in the early 1900's, and was the keeper of the family Croissant Roll recipe. She had a stubborn streak that fed a rift between her and my mother that lasted their entire relationship. I'm still not sure what the rift was about, but I remember the tension between them and mom once told me how her Grandma never did like her much. My great-grandparents lived in Arkansas with their Daschund, Heidi, who I spent most of my time with when visiting them.  The drive there always upset my stomach because of all of the ups and downs on the road to their house, and my dad's tendency to drive like Starsky & Hutch. On sunny days, we would all walk down the little woodsy road their house rested on to what I thought of as the beach. It was actually a small lake where the local kids would go swim. Or, I would pass time talking to the raccoons that Great Grandma fed while laying in the hammock in their back yard. All of my memories of those times are fuzzy and soft, like looking through a camera lens into a sunny field.

So, that is a very rough sketch of the people that introduced poetry into my life in a significant way. This book has been through 38 years with me. It has a faded liquid ring on its cover from where some drink, probably iced tea, sat on it at one point. Its cover is a bit frayed at the edges, but its sketches and poems are intact. I remember getting lost in both. The drawings by Ernest H. Shepard at first appear to be just simple line drawings, but the more you examine them, the more you notice how tightly drawn they are. Very contained drawings despite the curls and whimsy. A lot of dark shading with vague faces. They convey emotion and atmosphere through movement and posture- the disarray of hair, the swoosh of a skirt, the angle of a tilt of the head. They leave just enough to the imagination to invite you in without you realizing it. It was so easy to put myself in those pictures as a child.

This picture, in particular, was always a favorite. Even as a little girl I would allow myself to daydream within this little square of a picture. The color and sound would fill in as I put myself in place of that boy. I could hear the birds and the wind and the surf, feel the grass and dirt prick at my skin, this was my happy place. 

The first poem I fell in love with was "Spring Morning" from this book:

Where am I going? I don't quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-
Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

Where am I going? The clouds sail by,

The colorized version of the picture that
accompanies the poem in the book

Little ones, baby ones, over the sky.
Where am I going? The shadows pass,
Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.

If you were a cloud, and sailed up there,
You'd sail on water as blue as air,
And you'd see me here in the fields and say:        

"Doesn't the sky look green today?"

Where am I going? The high rooks call:
"It's awful fun to be born at all."
Where am I going? The ring-doves coo:
"We do have beautiful things to do."

If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"

Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow-

Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

A. A. Milne

If little girls can have mantras, this was mine. The "What does it matter where people go?" line always gave me a sense of freedom and wonder. A mix of, we are so tiny in this place and, live and let live settled deep and permanent within me due in large part to those words. Words have always been real to me. I remember knowing that Aslan was real. Maybe not here and now, but somewhere he watched over Narnia with a mane I could tangle myself up in. I knew that the bears were waiting on the London streets for some kid to step on a line so they could have a tasty meal of innocence. I believed that all of the characters I read about were around, maybe just beyond sight, but very real and waiting for us to notice them. This is probably a direct result of being an only child.

hahahaha Oh, Alfred.

I don't know how many hours I have spent with this book over the years, but I am sure it has added up to weeks of my life. I bring it out every now and then to see if it is still relevant. It is. Always. My family is mostly gone, so I've gotten detached from my childhood in a lot of ways. It feels like that was someone else, like watching a movie rather than something I participated in. I don't have a ton of physical things from my past, so this book is a way for me to get back in touch with that sense of grounding, of roots, a hard and fast connection to the memories. Sometimes I don't think that's important, but then that discounts the experiences and people that shaped me. I don't need to live there anymore, but it's nice to be reminded of how I became a poet, what influenced me and shaped me to be this person that loves language and playing with it, where some of my ridiculousness  and wanderlust comes from. Plus, I am a sucker for nostalgia at my core. I just know not to get trapped in it, now.

'Cause nothing can compare
to the Brandi Bear

So that is my rambling, incoherent blog about the first poem and poetry book I fell in love with. I posted it on Debbi's Girl because the family connection seemed to fit. Also, I let a lot of what I wrote stand because of something my daughter said at Christmas, about not feeling a lot of connection to our family, and how she liked to hear stories about family members, so this is in big part for her. Love love love love love love love to the Brandi Bear.