CMP Review 2023-04-13

April 13, 2023

“Many have a favourite poet for a year or two, to be discarded for another and another,” wrote Charlotte Mason. “Some are happy enough to find the poet of their lifetime in Spenser, Wordsworth, Browning, for example…”

Right, I would think as I read those lines. Maybe in her day.

It was about as realistic to me as the story of the “the little girl of nine who pined every day because the poems of Tennyson which she loved best were not to be found” at the house she was visiting. Or the boy of ten who read all of Southey’s poems on his Easter holiday. Maybe in those days. Or maybe it’s just fantasy.

But we faithfully followed our poetry rotation. And we followed our time table, complete with a (digitized) bell. One afternoon before dinner the chime sounded. I left the room to help to set the table. Several minutes later I saw my son still comfortably reading on the couch. “You can be done now,” I offered. “The bell rang.”

He did not look up as he spoke. “Dad, it’s not a chore when it’s Longfellow.”

Moments like that make me think that perhaps it’s not all made up, what Charlotte Mason wrote. Maybe it’s all true.

@artmiddlekauff