POETRY // FOR NAUGHTY CHILDREN EVERYWHERE

For Naughty Children Everywhere

by Joshua Mehigan

EXCERPT //

Like this issue’s heroine, Goldilocks, the protagonist of John Keats’s tale in verse is an unchaperoned young person, roaming the countryside in search of nothing special, behaving recklessly, selfishly, and naughtily, and in the end learning something about the outside world that is both vital and, even to an intelligent auditor of seven (however sleepy), deflatingly obvious in theory if not in practice. Keats’s story does more to endorse a preference for experiential over rote learning, even if, at its conclusion, the poet also acknowledges the likelihood that real-life wandering will produce a climax less thrilling than most good stories seem to demand, which in the case of three hungry bears and an oblivious little girl is probably for the best. (Most versions of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” end with her escape.) //

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