A short lyrical celebration of innocence, childhood wonder and the constancy of family love.
Favoring impressionism over narrative, Meyers’ paean to the joys of childhood packs a lot of picturesque imagery into its 37 lines. From loved ones to games, from junk food to elves, from the wonders of nature to the comforts of home, Meyers covers the gamut of childhood adventure, imagination and pleasure. The idealized childhood envisioned by this poem is one of unfettered curiosity, active exploration and engagement with the world and unconditional love. Though no singular narrative voice asserts itself amid the rapid-fire succession of images, the refrain of “Hugs and Kisses with Lots of Love” that closes each of the eight stanzas suggests a giver of hugs and kisses, a kindly singer behind the song, and reveals the song itself to be an invocation of blessing intended for her young listeners. Employing a heterometric rhythmic structure, Meyers produces some interesting and fun lines in unexpected ways. For instance, by interspersing some trochees and using feminine rhyme, she is able to shape dactyls, traditionally associated with serious and elegiac verse, into lighthearted lines such as “Marshmallows crispy all gooey and yummy / Open your mouth and fill-up your tummy.” Not every line works quite so well, but the prevalence of trochaic lines—long used in nursery rhymes and famously by William Blake in Songs of Innocence and Experience—along with an abundance of action-evoking present participial forms and a semiregular rhyme scheme, make reading this poem aloud a pleasurable shared experience—with one unfortunate exception. The metrically dissonant refrain, repeated eight times throughout the poem, tends to bring each stanza up short, jarring the reader from the fun and fast-paced flow of the previous lines. The poem reads significantly better if all iterations of that line, except the last, are skipped.
With a little modification, this is a lively and uplifting poem to share aloud with children, or for adults and children to recite together.