• Stay Frosty, People

  Filed under A Dude's Guide to Kids
  Dec 2

  by Richard

  I’m going to say a word that scares most of you, but it really shouldn’t. Get ready now. You set? All right, here goes. Poem. Sorry about that, but this post is actually about poems. I’ll try not to put too many of you to sleep here.

  See, this all got started when I was talking to George of the Jungle, my oldest little dude, who is a junior in high school. I’d asked him if he had any vocabulary in his latest Spanish assignment and he said no, they were into poetry. He then made the nasty taste face. You know the one. Face scrunched up, tongue sticking out and eyes clenched shut. Yeah, that one.

  Anyway, I (being a long-time fighter of lost causes) tried to convince him that not all poetry was bad. I’d already lost this fight with him about Shakespeare, so I didn’t want to lose this one as well.

  I don’t know why, but when I tried to come up with good poems, the name Robert Frost popped into my mind. More specifically his poem, Fire and Ice. Which, oddly, I could pretty much recite verbatim. I know. I was shocked as well. And, once we got into that, I had to show him some of Robert Frost’s other poems that I liked, all popular and well-known ones. I mean, I don’t hate poetry, but I’m not some kind of poem lover.

  Here’s Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.

  Some say the world will end in fire,
  Some say in ice.
  From what I’ve tasted of desire
  I hold with those who favor fire.
  But if it had to perish twice,
  I think I know enough of hate
  To say that for destruction ice
  Is also great
  And would suffice.

  Great stuff. Deceptively simple, yet, when you read it a bit more than once, it really has a lot to say.

  The other poems were The Road Not Taken and Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening. I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved these poems. Well, always for certain values of always, if we don’t include high school when I had to tear them apart, analyze them and then write papers on them.

  Hmmm. Maybe that explains George of the Jungle’s reaction when I talked about these poems. I read them off the computer screen and when I turned around, fully expecting to be basking in the quickly ignited fire of poetical love (I know. I’m really naive at times.), he was gone. Plain gone.

  Maybe next time.

  • Spread the word, dude!

  Tags: A Dude's Guide to Kids, Computer Screen, Desire, Destruction Ice, dude, family, Fire And Ice, Fire And Ice By Robert Frost, George Of The Jungle, Good Poems, Great Stuff, little dude, Long Time, love, Man, men, Nasty Taste, People, Poem, Poems, Poetry, richard, Robert Frost, school, Shakespeare, sleep, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Tongue, Vocabulary, Woods On A Snowy Evening
  
  Tagged as: Computer Screen, Desire, Destruction Ice, dude, family, Fire And Ice, Fire And Ice By Robert Frost, George Of The Jungle, Good Poems, Great Stuff, little dude, Long Time, love, Man, men, Nasty Taste, People, Poem, Poems, Poetry, richard, Robert Frost, school, Shakespeare, sleep, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Tongue, Vocabulary, Woods On A Snowy Evening
  
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