Poetry Response

My Talented Family
By Kenn Nesbit

My family’s very talented,

I’m certain you’ll agree.

We each possess a special skill

that anyone can see.

My brother’s good at burying

his finger up his nose.

My sister’s good at covering

her room with dirty clothes.

My father’s good at eating soup

in big, disgusting slurps.

My mother’s good at cutting loose

with world-record burps.

Our dog is good at piddling

in the back seat of the car.

The baby’s good at putting

Pop-Tarts in the VCR.

Myself I’m good at sleeping late

and making lots of noise,

and cluttering the living room

with comic books and toys.

So though we’re very talented,

I’m sad to say it’s true:

We’re only good at doing things

we’re not supposed to do.

Kenn Nesbit, “Talented Family” from Kids Pick the Funniest Poems, edited by Bruce Lansky (Minnetonka, Minn.: Meadowbrook Press, 1999). Copyright © 1999 by Kenn Nesbitt. Reprinted with the permission of the author

The theme of my narrative is that people can always rely on their family through good times and bad. Your family is always there for you, even if it may not seem like it. You can always count on your family to cheer you on, and like with the poem, that is my personal family's talent.  An example from my narrative that supports this is "I could hear my sister, 'You can do it Paige!'" This shows how my sister was always there for me, and that was her "family talent", she was always a friend to me. Another quote from my narrative is "I remember that he would always pitch it slower to me. Maybe it was because I was four years old, princess loving, little girl, that they thought they could take it easy on me or something." This shows how my family was always there, and really cared about me. My dad would purposefully throw slower to me, to spare my feelings. One last piece from my narrative that supports this in my narrative is, "But it wasn’t that I got the hit, or that I won the game. It was that I realized that my family was there, and cheering me on." This helps to show how my family has cheered me on through good times... and bad times. I know I have reiterated this point over and over again, but that was my family's talent.

The theme of the poem is that a family has many talents, that make them meaningful in some way to a person. It is easy to see how the narrator feels as if his family has a variety of talents that all affect him. However, these talents are all things that if a family were to do this, it would be disrespectful, unorganized and many other non-appealing characteristics. One piece of evidence that I found in the poem to supports this is,

"So though we’re very talented,

I’m sad to say it’s true:

We’re only good at doing things

we’re not supposed to do." This shows how the narrator is almost disgusted by his family's talents because they are not really seen as talents, but rather gross and disrespectful things. Another example that shows that the theme of the poem is,

"My father’s good at eating soup

in big, disgusting slurps."This illustrates an example of how the family has... interesting talents. Also, I think if you were to continue onto the poem, you would find the narrator begin to admit that this is his family, and they are somewhat proud of them. One last example of how the family has multiple weird talents is,
"The baby’s good at putting

Pop-Tarts in the VCR." This gives the reader of the poem some ideas of what the family's many talents are. Although, these family's talents are different from my own family's talents, I think this poem does connect with my situation as well. My sister cheering me on, because that was her talent. That was my family's talent. Caring. Even though, this family's talents are very different, they are still talents of a family.