Wendy Negley, Poet

 As a child I don't recall reading Winnie the Pooh, what I recall is the two children's verse books written by A.A. Milne: When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. I still have my copy of When We Were Very Young (no idea where the other one went, perhaps my mother sold it at a garage sale? Now I will go look at eBay and Amazon to see if I can find one.) These were short poems with illustrations by the same artist who did the Winnie the Pooh illustrations and they included some poems about Winnie. I loved the rhythmn, rhymes and ideas conveyed. Perhaps they inspired to write my first poems. It certainly was an enjoyment that lead to my love of poetry later in life.  Here are the first and last verse of "Nursery Chairs"    One of the chairs is South America,       One of the chairs is a ship at sea,    One is a cage for a great big lion,       And one is a chair for Me.   Shall I go off to South America?     Shall I put out in my ship to sea?  Or get in my cage and b

      I wrote my first poem when I was 4 3/4, according to my mother in my baby book. here is that poem:                                 I have a little kitty and his name is Puff.                     And he is round as fluff.                    When he's happy you will know                    That his tail waves to and fro.                   He has a ball                   That he chases along the hall.                   He curls up in his bed at night                  And goes to sleep til morning light. Genius, right? At the age of 7 I wrote this one:                When two little girls go to bed                One little Mommy gets tired instead. This was about the fact that when she put us to bed by reading to us she would often fall asleep or at least start yawning while my sister and I were wide awake. It was an early recognition of irony!        Later in High School I wrote quite a bit of poetry and wanted to become a poet. Of course, I was discouraged from because "y