Pick Me Up

By William Jay Smith b. 1918

Pick me up with a pile of blocks

And carry me past the Cuckoo Clocks!

Pick me up with a pile of hay

And carry me off to Buzzards Bay!

Pick me up with a pile of snow

And carry me out to Idaho!

Pick me up with a pile of twine

And carry me down to the Argentine!

Pick me up with a pile of lava

And carry me over the hills of Java!

Pick me up with a pile of sand

And put me down in Newfoundland!

Source: Laughing Time: Collected Nonsense (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1980)

Biography

William Jay Smith told Contemporary Authors: "I am a lyric poet, alert, I hope, as my friend Stanley Kunitz has pointed out, 'to the changing weathers of a landscape, the motions of the mind, the complications and surprises of the human comedy.' I believe that poetry should communicate: it is, by its very nature, complex, but its complexity should not prevent its making an immediate impact on the reader. Great poetry must have . . .

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