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Ogre Food
My parents, dear, although you love me so;
and in your love, wish only for my best.
Yet, to the first-grade class I will not go,
nor shall I end my tears of loud protest.
For fearful premonitions haunt my thoughts.
My heart is filled with terror and with dread
that deep within those walls an Ogre plots
to grind the children’s bones to make his bread.
Think not that I might yet accept this fate;
nor hope that soon I’ll cease to fight and scream,
while janitors at school collaborate
to feed us to a troll with sour-cream.
My cousin told me all about the ghoul,
and bade me rather fight than go to school.
And so, I ask you, mother, father, dear,
whatever skills you think may be accrued;
what value has my whole first-grade career
if I am meant for naught but Ogre food?
Then, do you wonder why I kick and bite?
Why 911, I called—my life to save?
Or why I hid beneath the house last night
in hope I might escape an early grave?
What terrors wait at school, I do not know.
I only know that terrors there await.
But passively to death I will not go!
Nor lie quiescent on the Ogre’s plate.
My cousin bade me not to be a fool—
and said I’d better fight than go to school.
.
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Steve Cooper is a retired professional career counselor. He lives near Salem, Oregon. He has one traditionally published picture book on Amazon, Don’t Eat Your Seed Corn, and several of his pieces have been published in the annual literary print anthology from Portland Writer’s Mill.
Loved it. Thank you. Very funny. My first thought on reading was that today the advice could apply to all of us and keep us from ever walking out the front door.
Imaginative and clever, along with being humorous, your poem is a delight.
Well done and absolutely hilarious, Steve, and I don’t laugh easy! A+ 🙂
Dear Steve,
I have to wonder if your humorous poem is simply a hilarious take on the Proverb, “The lazy man says, ‘There is a lion outside, I shall be slain the streets!'” or if there is a deeper, darker meaning – that six year olds really are being eaten alive in some schools these days. I taught first grade in the 90’s. The setting was not for the faint of heart even then. And when young children these days are taught all sorts of things that have no business in the classroom, perhaps theirs and their parents’ hearts out to be “filled with dread!”
Gigi
This delightful poem made me smile but wryly as there may be some truth in it. It made me think . It also inspired me to write a limerick as I was also thinking of Mr Tweedie’s challenge. Not bad going really for a poem . Superb , thank you.
The poem is very well constructed, and quite funny. The rhymes are excellent and the couplet refrain is a nice touch, with the rhyme of “fool,” “school,” and “ghoul.”
I have only one criticism. The speaker is a child who is leaving kindergarten to go to first grade. It seems to me that the very high and polished level of diction doesn’t mesh with what we would normally expect from the mouth of such a young person. The voice that comes across here is that of an adult, and a very articulate adult to boot.
Hilarious! Laughing out loud. Thanks for the fun.
I was reminded of that comic song that was always on the radio when I was a kid – “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp (Granada))”.
Thanks for the humour, Steve.
“I don’t mean for this to scare ya —
But my bunkmate has malaria!”
Very clever and funny; as kid-like, too, I’m guessing, as you want it to be (pace Prof.Salemi).
What a wonderfully eloquent and fun-to-read poem this is. I can totally relate to the sentiments expressed therein and I think it describes my 6 year old self of many decades ago very well. Great job!
Steve, the diction here is exactly right for conveying the thoughts (not the actual speech) of a certain kind of child–and for characterizing the parents he has to contend with. Nobody would want you to use an “age-appropriate” word list! Children (like foreign language learners) are constantly absorbing and coming to understand words and logic they don’t yet know how to use. We know (for one thing) that this child has heard the fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk.” His parents read to him. They are articulate, and with his natural fears of the unknown at school, he knows he can only hope to avoid it with an impressive argument made in their language. They may be scholars or lawyers; your refrain couplets cite the testimony of an older cousin. Of course that shows the 6-year-old’s amusing lack of logic. Why is the cousin still alive to tell if he ended up as ogre food? The poem as a whole reflects the fantasy atmosphere (and vocabulary) of a kind of literature familiar to small children. These days they can even see and hear it on their child-size video tablets. So your young protagonist is addressing his parents in his best adult style. And that makes it all the more fun for your adult readers!
Margaret, the assertion that the diction of this child “is exactly right” is simply a convoluted attempt to save the appearances — sort of like Young Earth Creationists claiming that the world is only six thousand years old, if you just look at the geological and fossil evidence properly.
But poems are fictive artifacts, existing in a licensed zone of hyperreality, and in traditional practice they are expected to suit diction to character, situation, literary level, and genre. Poets have poetic license, to be sure — but they have no license to violate expectations by having a common laborer talk like an Oxbridge don.
In addition, it is idle to try and think up (ex post facto) what social class this child is from, or what his parents are like, or how well he might pick up new words, or how much he may have learned from his older cousin. None of these inquiries is pertinent to the poem itself, which is always the proper place to focus critical attention.
No one is suggesting that the poet should limit himself to a modern “age-appropriate vocabulary.” But if he is going to practice fictive mimesis, he cannot choose implausible and farfetched vocabulary, as is the case here. How many six-year-olds say “fearful premonitions,” or “may be accrued,” or “meant for naught,” or “lie quiescent,” or “My cousin bade me not”? (The kid knows the past tense of “bid”? Gimme a break.) You may say that such a child can be fictive, but he sure as hell isn’t a products of mimesis.
I enjoyed this poem, Steve. There is much craft here to admire and much about it that is quite funny and charming.
I, too, was struck by the maturity of the diction of the child-speaker. Matching character to vocabulary and speech patterns in a dramatic monologue is a subject of great interest to me. In general — I believe — diction, along with the use of alliteration, assonance, metrical rigor, sophistication of rhyme, use of internal rhyme… all are factors of the speaker’s level of education, age, class, experience, location. No less than in a theatrical play, to make the illusion work, the speech should indeed be very carefully linked to these qualities of a character. I believe your poem would be a better poem if the reader did not perceive a discrepancy between the child’s age and his improbably accomplished communication skills.
Here we have a first grade child with a vocabulary that would make a graduate student proud. There should be reasons why a speaker uses the language that he does — especially if it is one where the language and the identity of the speaker don’t obviously align. This six-year old child has an astonishingly precocious vocabulary! Does that matter in a poem? Maybe. Maybe not. But ask yourself this: Does it matter in a play or movie any less? Would you accept a six-year old in a movie speaking this way without some explanation of his genius? Child prodigy? Parallel reality? In poetry, I imagine there must be some latitude. But how much?
Sometimes the poet may enter a fantasy realm where rocks and trees can speak. In such a fantasy realm, it may be argued, one may get away with using language that is surprising. What does a rock sound like, after all? But even in such a case one must look for language which is unobtrusive. You don’t want a rock doing a soliloquy which sounds like Ezra Pound or Dorothy Parker. But if you can make it clear that you are in that fantasy realm somehow the reader will forgive many otherwise obtrusive word choices. Browning managed this with a subhuman monster in Caliban Upon Setebos. James Barrie was superb in writing children voices in Peter Pan. I once wrote a poem in the voice of Frankenstein’s monster. He was articulate (and I recognized great risk in giving him words.) I did my best to solve this problem by making it purely a soliloquy in the monster’s head because otherwise I would have had to explain how the monster suddenly became so articulate. And that I could not do.
This all relates to taste rather than any type of rules, of course. But the poet writing a dramatic monologue does, I think, want to give the poem every adantage in terms of both readability and credibility — we are in the business of trying to encourage the suspension of disbelief. But if a poem is going to be in the voice of a child — all things being equal — I think it either ought to be in a child’s vocabulary or the poet should make it clear that we are solely in the child’s head and not actually talking to the parents. Also keep in mind that you have written a comic poem but not satire.
The “quiescent” diction issue can also be gotten around by turning it into a nostalgia piece so that an adult with an adult’s vocabulary and experience gives voice to what he felt 70 years ago. Dylan Thomas did this superbly in A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I rather think the vocabulary of this poem would call less attention to breaking character if it was more explicitly a nostalgia “memory” piece. I think that a “wrap-around”narration by the adult would resolve any diction questions and make this highly enjoyable poem even better.
Thank you, Steve, both for the poem which I still consider highly charming and for the opportunity to discuss some poetic theory which has long been on my mind. I look forward to reading more of your work.