Sunday, April 27, 2008

"I Went to the Barber" - Kenn Nesbitt

Ken Nesbitt is a children's poet who writes most of his works for the webiste poetry4kids.com. This website is very popular among early childhood teachers. Nesbitt has had some of his poems compiled into books and some published in anthologies. His writes humerous, often nonsense poems. Nesbitt's poems generally tell the story of outrageous happenings, but they end on a realistic note. This is an effective method that children love about his poems.

I read Nesbitt's poem about a trip to the barber. It was written if first person point of view. The narrator, perhaps a little boy, is getting his hair trimmed, but the barber is cutting off more than his hair. By the end of the poem, the narrator has lost his eyebrows, ears, nose, lips, cheeks, and finally, his whole head. The narrator speaks pretty narratively for being dead. He doesn't seem to care really about what happened. He just seems to be stating fact.

The poem ends by the author talking specifically to the readers. He warns kids that if their fathers tell them they need a trim, they should let him read this poem. Once the father reads what happened to the narrator when he got his hair trimmed, the father would never make his child get their hair cut ever again. This is the realistic note that the author uses in most of his poems. It only makes the poem all the more humerous and enjoyable. Even I lauged when reading this poem.