Home-Grown Writing Culture

By Peter Porco

Writing is not the principal topic of conversation in our house, but it is a main current. Kathleen and I met while working at the newspaper. Our first talks were about the craft of writing, and in some respects we haven't lost a beat after more than 15 years. We are not pushing Maeve toward a career as a writer, but our daughter is obviously inhaling our values—and learning some of our habits. Books, for example, are part of the furniture around here, as Kathleen says, and Maeve is a voracious reader. She and Kathleen have been members of a mother-daughter book club for two years. My wife and I do not watch much TV, and Maeve doesn't have a large appetite for it either, although she's fanatical about a few programs. All three of us write in journals, sporadically.

Years ago, whenever I drove Maeve to and from pre-school and other places, I told her stories in the car, fairy tales and other yarns I made up. I invented a whole series of stories that featured characters based on Maeve and her friends and classmates, and some disaster caused by a huge miscreant—Maeve's "bad giant." Always these stories ended well, with Maeve and her buddies as the heroes. My wife told stories with a totally different set of characters, miniature people who were friends with Maeve and her friends, I think. Soon Maeve couldn't go anywhere without asking me for a "bad-giant story."

I remember reading to Maeve from when she was an infant. I read Mother Goose nursery rhymes to her when she was six months old, with an emphasis on the sound of the words and the clickety-clack of the consonants. Neither Kathleen nor I ever spoke babytalk to Maeve. She picked up speech at a relatively early age, speaking in short sentences by a year old. Is there a connection? Could be ...

I read some poetry to Maeve but mostly children's stories, "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Pinocchio" and dozens of others. We got her a children's book of intelligent poems with an accompanying tape, and for a while, when she was about 5 or 6, she listened to the tape before bed. She has almost always been more inclined to read stories and novels for children than poems. However, she did choose two poems, one of them Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," for material to read at an Alaska Theatre of Youth audition a few years ago.

Two or three years ago, I read The Old Man and the Sea to Maeve, some each night before bed. Hemingway's prose is vivid yet simple enough that a child can enjoy it. Now she and I have a deal. She chooses a book for me to read to her, and then I choose one, and then she chooses one, and so on. Her first choice was The Boggart. I followed that with a second reading of The Old Man and the Sea, which we finished last week. She had remembered almost all the main details, but I think this time she appreciated more of the character of old Santiago. Now we're on to her choice: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (third time through the book for her), which I'm enjoying.

Right now Maeve is interested in the local semi-annual Under 21 Poetry Slam that I had a part in creating. I wanted a slam for participants and spectators who were not old enough to attend the regular event in a nightclub, and I wanted it partly because Maeve had heard us talk about the slams and asked to go to one. She's too young to read at one, but she wants to be at the upcoming Under 21 slam and has invited her friend. That evening her friend will sleep over, Maeve said, "and we will work on our poems."

My Classroom
By Maeve McCoy

As I look out the classroom window, I see a blue sky, set against the rich
red and yellows of the half naked trees. Their branches shake softly in
the wind, whispering a song only they can hear.

Below the window sit a pile of books, their colorful covers seeming to
scream "Read me, Read me". I wonder if they'll ever get read, or just sit
there, a mystery.

Next to them sits a computer, outside it is so dismal and gray, yet inside
is a mind smarter than a genius.

I sit at a round table, like the infamous knights. Ivan and Lizzie and
Alicia are my table mates. Our fat, puffy binders sit around the table,
containing the day's work. When we were little, these dreaded binders did
not exist. And if they did, they were always associated with the "big
kids".

Now we are the big kids.

WINTER
By Maeve McCoy

Racing down a sleek, sparkling hill
on a cloudless, pale blue sky
our breath coming out in spurts
of frosty, iridescent mists.

Staring up at the velvet sky
The stars sparkling like diamonds upon it
Feeling the cold in my bones,
and the warm entering them as I step into the steamy
kitchen.

  Books as comfort food