Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake (our review)

I am not, in general, a connoisseur of poetry; I enjoy reading some poetry and have even dabbled in writing it (during my more youthful and visionary years) but I'm not adept at deciphering it. That being said, I think reading poetry—real poetry, not today's children's poems—is a wonderful way to share language with a child. Calvin and I have had some wonderful afternoons sharing poetry while sitting on our front porch watching the birds at our feeders, and sometimes we have read together as a family after dinner. I mentioned last week that we got him Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake for his birthday and since then we have been reading some of the poems from that collection and enjoying the artwork as well. Not all of the poems are really easily grasped by a child of Calvin's age so we haven't done the whole book yet, but we have done quite a few and he has certainly identified some of his favorites, including, of course, The Tyger, and also A Dream, and mostly Laughing Song.

About Laughing Song he says:

[summary] "It's about laughing, of course, and having a good time. And cherries."

[he likes it because of] "the ha ha he!"