`Being a Poet Begins With Watching'

Some poets are so varied in their gifts, so appealing in music and matter, that readers outside the academy and poetry ghetto, even children, can know the pleasures of artful language. I’ve seen attractively illustrated kids’ editions – published in the 21st century, I mean -- of Browning, Whitman, Kipling and Wallace Stevens. With her devotion to animals, eccentric arrangement of words on the page and general enjoyment of life, a well-edited selection from Marianne Moore would seem a likely recruit to the ranks of kiddie lit, and I’m not alone in my hunch. A search of the library catalog on Friday uncovered an unexpected gem – Call Me Marianne, a children’s book written by Jen Bryant and illustrated by David A. Johnson. It passed the conclusive test: My 5-year-old read the book in silence as we drove home from the library.

Bryant’s story is simple: A young boy, Jonathan, boards a bus in Brooklyn in the 1940s and sits across from a woman dressed in black. She is making notes and holds in her hand the same Times article as Jonathan: “Exotic Lizards Have New Home at City Zoo.” Both get off at the zoo and go separately. Jonathan sees a tri-cornered hat blowing in the wind and returns it to the owner –Marianne Moore, who invites Jonathan to accompany her to the Reptile House. Jonathan asks if she is a scientist:

“`No, I’m not a scientist – I’m a poet.’

“`Oh,’ I reply. I’ve never met a poet before. `What, exactly, does a poet do?’ I ask her.”

The crowd interrupts before Moore can answer. Eventually, she says:

“`For me, being a poet begins with watching. I watch animals. I watch people. I read books and look at photographs. I notice details – little things that other people miss.’

“`Then I write them all down, I shuffle them around, like pieces of a puzzle, and I read them over and over out loud. And if I’m patient, very patient –‘

“and if I work, line by line, to get the words and the sounds just right, and the rhythm just right, then I make a good poem.’”

Together, they watch the lizards and other animals, and as a reward for returning her hat, Moore gives Jonathan a blank notebook and whispers, “`You could write poetry.’” And you, reader, can supply the dénouement. It’s a charming book and Johnson’s ink and watercolor illustrations are pointillist triumphs. Friday night, when David asked me to read to him, he asked for “the book with the bears in it.” Moore would have appreciated his emphasis. I also read him Moore’s “O to be a Dragon” (“Felicitous phenomenon!”) aloud to him. In her introduction to A Marianne Moore Reader (1961) Moore explains:

“Why an inordinate interest in animals and athletes [her love of the Brooklyn Dodgers was legendary]? They are subject for art and exemplars of it, are they not? minding their own business. Pangolins, hornbills, pitchers, catchers, do not pry or prey – or prolong the conversation; do not make us self-conscious; look their best when caring least; although in a Frank Buck documentary I saw a leopard insult a crocodile (basking on a river bank – head only visible on the bank) – bat the animal on the nose and continue on its way without so much as a look back.”


Her sentiments recall these lines from Section 32 of “Song Of Myself”:


“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

“They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”


Today we observe Whitman’s 189th birthday.