About the Poems - LS
About the Poems
by Laurel Snyder In the last two years, I've had two children, and suddenly I find that everything I write is about kids—having them, resenting them, being changed by them, loving them, not quite understanding them, wanting to be them. I think a lot about how they interact with the world, how they approach language. And in this, kids are a lot like poems. Language re-discovered, recycled, made new. At first I was embarassed by these poems. I felt like mommy-poems were something to apologize for. But now I think about how everyone writes about their work—whether they teach, practice medicine, or work in a steel mill. And right now kids are my work, and so my stimulus.