学进去

When I was at the age of nine, my parents took us to the lake, 10 miles away, every day for a whole summer, me and my two brothers, Hap and Danny. To be honest, we were all a little too wild.

At that time, our car had only an outdated AM radio. A trip to the lake meant over an hour in the car, along with winding mountain roads where the AM radio could not pick up any signal. My parents must have figured out early that if they didn’t keep us three boys busy and focused, we would eventually start fighting just to have something to do. They made up various games. They told wonderful stories. He could even recite (背诵) “Casey at the Bat,” “The Raven,” “Dangerous Dan McGrew” or any of the other narrative poems at the drop of a hat.

One of the poems that fascinated me most was a bit of nonsense verse (打油诗) which I later found out was called “The Dying Fisherman’s Song.” It begins: “It was a summer’s day in winter / And the rain was snowing fast / As a barefoot girl with shoes on/ Stood sitting in the grass...” I was hooked. These lines in my head were kept repeating over and over, week after week, until they burned new electrical pathways in my brain.

I did what any 9-year-old poetry addict would do, given the circumstances: I read CRICKET magazine, hungrily. I was greatly influenced by their poems, and I am so thankful for what its publisher, Marianme Carus, did—creating such a prefect magazine for 9-year-olds. Yes, I fell in love with funny children’s poetry. It’s a love affair that continues to this day, 10 books related with poetry (of my own) later.