Why I prefer the poems over Winnie-the-Pooh
I loved poetry as a child. My father read us picture books written in rhyme; my siblings and I read to each other Hilaire Bellock’s The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts and Cautionary Tales for Children; and we studied Struwwelpeter to keep us appalled. But the poetry books I kept coming back to were A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six.
To this day I believe it was his impeccable rhythm that hooked me—that, and his brilliant use of repetition. I still love the opening lines of Disobedience,*
- James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
The poem is masterful. Though six stanzas long, Milne’s use of internal repetition and clever permutations of phrases make it a story and a joke and a breeze to read and to listen to.
But perhaps what I loved the most were Milne’s characters, true to life, unapologetically flawed and wonderful at the same time.
Who could forget poor Mary Jane who cried with all her might and main, yet had “lovely rice pudding for dinner, again—” I was convinced that King John was not a good man, but if Father Christmas loved him at all, he really should bring him a big, red, india-rubber ball! I remember the king who only wanted a little bit of butter for his bread; the dormouse who loved delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red); and Sir Brian who blipped people on the head.
And it is in his poems that Milne brought Christopher Robin to us—an honest-to-goodness boy who avoids bears by stepping in squares and not the lines in the street; who suffers through wheezles and sneezles, and worries about measles and mumps; and who knows that being six is as clever as clever and plans to be six for ever and ever.**
Sure Winnie-the-Pooh has the movies and the merchandise and all that publicity. But I keep my love for the poems
- That’s all that I know of the three little foxes
Who kept their handkerchiefs in cardboard boxes.
They lived in the forest in three little houses,
But they didn’t wear coats and they didn’t wear trousies,
And they didn’t wear stockings and they didn’t wear sockses.***
* In When We Were Very Young
** From Rice Pudding, The King’s Breakfast, The Dormouse and the Doctor, Bad Sir Brian Botany, Lines and Squares in When We Were Very Young; and King John’s Christmas, Sneezles, The End in Now We Are Six
*** From The Three Little Foxes in When We Were Very Young.