When I was eight or nine years old, I wrote my first poem. My mother read the little poem and began to cry. “Buddy, you didn’t really write this beautiful, beautiful poem!”
Shyly, proud-bursting, I stammered that I had. She poured out her praise. Why, this poem was nothing short of genius! I glowed.
I spent the best part of that afternoon preparing for the arrival of my father. But he did not return until an hour late for dinner. “Ben, a beautiful thing has happened,” my mother began. “Buddy has written his first poem! And it’s beautiful, absolutely amazing.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to decide that for myself,” Father said.
That poem was only ten lines. But it seemed to take hours. I could hear my father breathing. “I think it’s lousy,” my father said.
“Ben, these are the first lines of poetry he’s ever written,” my mother was saying. “He needs encouragement.”
They quarreled over it. I couldn’t stand it another second. I ran from the dinning room bawling.
Up in my room I threw myself on the bed and sobbed.
A few years later I took a second look at that first poem; it was a pretty lousy poem. But it wasn’t until years later that the true meaning of that painful “first poem” experience dawned on me. As I became a professional writer, it became clearer and clearer to me how fortunate I had been. I had a mother who said, “Buddy, did you really write this? I think it’s wonderful!” and a father who shook his head no and drove me to tears with “I think it’s lousy.” A writer — in fact every one of us in life — needs that loving-mother force from which all creation flows; and yet alone it is incomplete, even misleading, finally destructive, without the father force to caution, “Watch. Listen. Review. Improve.”
1. How do you understand the underlined part in Paragraph 2?(no more than 8 words )2. Why did the writer’s parents quarrel at dinner?(no more than 10 words )
3. What did the writer think of his first poem when he grew older?(no more than 8 words )
4. What does the last paragraph mainly talk about?(no more than 15 words )
5. What kind of parents do you need in life?(no more than 20 words )
