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E. STUART HARDY (BORN 1870) FROM
THE STORY OF THE FIVE REBELLIOUS DOLLS, C. 1910.
DARLING & COMPANY POSTCARD, donated by Patricia VanAmburg.
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What is up with these dolls? They look cranky, stressed out. I tried to do some research on their story, to find a copy of this children's book, but I didn't have much luck. I was stuck.
Should the poem for this card focus on the dolls? Maybe the child to whom the rebellious dolls belong. I couldn't settle on the right voice.
Then, I found my personal connection to the drama unfolding in this scene. When I inserted my long-ago self into the story, the poem came together.
Rebellion
When
my child was at last asleep,
a
soldier doll in thumb-sized bearskin hat
marched
to me across the nursery floor
I’d walked all night. He raised
I’d walked all night. He raised
his
toothpick sword, entreated me to flee
with
his band of fed-up dolls
as
if I were a tangle-haired Parisian girl.
I
wanted to run. I did.
I
was a peg doll, out of joint,
the
fine suit of clothes I came with−
gone,
hat crumpled. I froze
and
so they left me, traveled the world.
Sometimes,
they still send
a
postcard home, addressed
to
Big Bad Momma.
Laura
Shovan
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| The book's cover. The poem was almost about its author, E. Nesbit, best known for The Railway Children. Her biography is worth reading, even on Wikipedia. |
A
big help -- guest blogger Charles Rammelkamp. A few weeks back, Charles shared postcards from his twin, who often addresses his greetings to “Bad Feller” and “Bad
One.” I borrowed that title for the poem’s final line.
A few
of the poems in my 44 Postcard Project have been autobiographical. In poetry, really in all writing, I shy away from that term. Is “Rebellion” a
true reflection of my life, when my children were small? Even during nursing
strikes and the dreaded Coxsackie virus, I never hallucinated or imagined dolls
coming to life and telling me to escape.
And
yet, there is truth in the poem. Parenting can be a challenge. When the
babies (now the teens) have a particularly awful day, there is that momentary
flash of “What would life have been like if...?”
Speaking
of postcards and the Truth with a capital T, check out writer Michael Kimball’s
postcard project.
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| Michael Kimball's latest book. |
“MichaelKimball writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)” was featured on Little Patuxent Review’s blog last summer. Kimball told LPR's Ilse Munro, “It taps into something human and humane, and I continue to
be amazed by what people tell me.
.jpg) |
Kimball
interviews people and writes up their stories, a process he called “intense and
intimate.” The project has become a blog and will soon be a
book.
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| Pre-order from Amazon. |
Writing Exercise (Grades 3 and up):
Try Postcard
Life Stories with your students (with sensitivity to pairings).
Skills:
- interview techniques and active listening as students gather information from one another;
- editing, deciding which facts to keep and which to cut, so that the resulting profile of a classmate fits on a postcard.
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| Vintage postcard available on Ebay. |
