A local children’s ministry is doing ads for a special outreach on the talk radio station to which I generally listen.

From what I know of the ministry, it’s a good one that does fine, much-needed work.

But I find their promotion very odd.

They’re raising funds to get kids backpacks and supplies for school. Their ad features a kid getting his stuff together at the start of the year. He finds out his mother hasn’t bought him a new backpack, and he pitches a fit, saying all the kids will laugh at him because he’s using last year’s backpack.

Maybe I’m a heartless jerk, but there are a lot of things in the world I worry about more than kids having to use the same backpack two years in a row. I got laughed at a whole lot when I was a kid, and I’d have been pretty relieved if it’d had only been a matter of derision of my school supplies.

I keep wondering if this is some kind of head-fake. I’m sure the people who carry on this ministry have to deal with kids whose parents are neglecting them due to drug use, or sexually abusing them, or pimping them out. I wonder if they’re doing this backpack thing because they’re afraid to tell about the real needs they have to try to fill.

But if that’s true, they’re being dishonest with their donors, which I hope would not be the case.

So I just don’t get it.

Speaking of school kids, it occurred to me to wonder whether anybody’s done a folklore study of children’s traditional poetry.

I don’t mean the stuff written for children, like A Child’s Garden of Verses or the books of Dr. Seuss.

I mean the stuff composed by children, who knows how long ago, and passed down through generations from kid to kid?

Poems like “I Think I’ll Go Eat Worms,” and “________ and __________, sittin’ in a tree,” and little girls’ jump rope rhymes. And parodies like, “Glory, glory, hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler.”

It seems to me this is an example of a purely oral tradition, still alive in our literate culture. I’d think much could be learned by tracking those poems over the years and generations, observing how they change and stay the same.

Maybe somebody’s done that. But I can’t find anything about it on the web.

Poetic justice and the reason poetry matters

Ex Libris by Arthur Upson

In answer to a mandate by the Surveyor of the Taxes

Sir, as your mandate did request,

I send you here a faithfu’ list,

O’ gudes an’ gear, an’ a’ my graith,

To which I’m clear to gi’e my aith. (R. Burns, “The Inventory”)

Do you remember when I fought

The bank and the courthouse ring,

For pocketing the interest on public funds?

And when I fought our leading citizens

For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?

And when I fought the water works

For stealing streets and raising rates? (E.L. Masters, “Harry Carey Goodhue”)

I du believe the people want

A tax on teas an’ coffees,

Thet nothin’ aint extravygunt,—

Purvidin’ I’m in office; . . .

I du believe in any plan

O’ levyin’ the taxes,

Ez long ez, like a lumberman,

I git jest wut I axes; (J.R. Lowell, “The Pious Editor’s Creed”)

That very morning

The Federal Judge, in the very next room

To the room where I took the oath,

Decided the constitution

Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes

For the water works of Spoon River! (E.L. Masters, “Ida Chicken”)

But each year, unawares,

He sent a sum for taxes due—

And fence repairs. (H.C. Stearns, “Reuben Roy”)

Someone, please tell me,

if you know, where does,

all the money go? (Mac McGovern, “Taxes”)

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook;

Each cloud that floated in the sky

Writes a letter in my book. (R.W. Emerson, “The Apology”)

A poem by Bill Coyle, called “Hindsight.”

I like this kind of thing, though I wish I had a better grasp of it.

SLEEP sleep old Sun, thou canst not have repast

As yet, the wound thou took’st on friday last;

Sleepe then, and rest; The world may beare thy stay,

A better Sun rose before thee to day

from “Resurrection, imperfect” by John Donne

from James H. Cousins’ poem, “A Curse on a Closed Gate”

“BE THIS the fate

Of the man who would shut his gate

On the stranger, gentle or simple, early or late.

When his mouth with a day’s long hunger and thirst would wish

For the savour of salted fish,

Let him sit and eat his fill of an empty dish.”