Number 62: Marie Ponsot "One Is One"

One Is One

Heart, you bully, you punk, I'm wrecked, I'm shocked

stiff. You? you still try to rule the world--though

I've got you: identified, starving, locked

in a cage you will not leave alive, no

matter how you hate it, pound its walls,

& thrill its corridors with messages.

Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl

in your cell but I'm deaf to your rages,

your greed to go solo, your eloquent

threats of worse things you (knowing me) could do.

You scare me, bragging you're a double agent

since jailers are prisoners' prisoners too.

Think! Reform! Make us one. Join the rest of us,

and joy may come, and make its test of us.

-- Marie Ponsot

Hap Notes: I wonder if you notice that Marie Ponsot's (born 1921) ferocious poem is a sonnet? Ponsot is a master of forms of poetry and this poem is a beautiful illustration of how the forms are not worn out if you know how to handle them. Ponsot still teaches poetry writing at the Poetry Center in New York and she was a professor of English at Queens College in New York until she retired in 1991.

Her fame as a poet came late. She had one book of poetry published in 1956 by Ferlinghetti's City Lights. It fared with little success. She didn't publish another book of poems for more than 40 years. Her book The Bird Catcher for which she won the National Books Critic Circle Award, was published in 1998 when she was 77. She was a freelance writer for many years and translated many children's books from the French, notably Jean de la Fontaine's stories. I wonder how many people have noticed, over the years, how much children's literature and poetry intersect? (Although de la Fontaine's work has something for everyone, not just children- but that's often true with children's lit, yes?)

Ponsot majored in 17th Century literature at Columbia University, moved to France, married a painter, Claude Ponsot (a student of Fernand Leger). She had six sons with Ponsot before divorcing him. She's lived a few lives.

Ponsot is a wonder. She writes with many forms and one of the things she suggests to poetry students for understanding how to write in the many different forms available is to practice. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Yet I do believe it's one of the hardest things to do. You will often fail but you have to keep practicing. If you were on a team for football, baseball, hockey, tennis or underwater basket weaving, you would have to practice, practice practice. Yet somehow we feel that poetry should just spout out of us- as if it's EASIER than a sport. Eh?

Marie Ponsot is a very well practiced poet. You can see the effort she put into each poem to clarify or sculpt her words. In "One is One" there are shifts in the poem- is she talking to just her heart? Is there another person she's addressing? What person? The poem is brilliantly open. I tend to think of it as just the poet addressing her own heart. When she says "join the rest of us" is she suggesting the heart should join the other organs in her body or join with the many other people that she is (and we all are) inside or is she talking to God or somebody else? Your call.

You can find a little more Ponsot here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/marie-ponsot


Here's a great Marie Ponsot quote: "A poet is the person who takes time from the other tasks of the world’s work to try to tell the truth. So the obligation to do it more frequently or more accurately or more consciously or more willingly, at least, is greater. And the form of the telling is part of something—like language—bigger than the poet. If you’re doing it, you should take yourself seriously and do the best you can. Do the damn best you can! And know that this one may not be it, but maybe if you work hard on this one, the next one may be better. You have to believe that the resource is there, that there’s a place for it to come from and a place for it to go. The place that it comes from is your language. And the place where it can go is into this vast conversation of human animals trying to say something memorable."

Number 61: Diane Wakoski "Belly Dancer"

Belly Dancer

Can these movements which move themselves

be the substance of my attraction?

Where does this thin green silk come from that covers my body?

Surely any woman wearing such fabrics

would move her body just to feel them touching every part of her.

Yet most of the women frown, or look away, or laugh stiffly.

They are afraid of these materials and these movements

in some way.

The psychologists would say they are afraid of themselves, somehow.

Perhaps awakening too much desire—

that their men could never satisfy?

So they keep themselves laced and buttoned and made up

in hopes that the framework will keep them stiff enough not to feel

the whole register.

In hopes that they will not have to experience that unquenchable

desire for rhythm and contact.

If a snake glided across this floor

most of them would faint or shrink away.

Yet that movement could be their own.

That smooth movement frightens them—

awakening ancestors and relatives to the tips of the arms and toes.

So my bare feet

and my thin green silks

my bells and finger cymbals

offend them—frighten their old-young bodies.

While the men simper and leer—

glad for the vicarious experience and exercise.

They do not realize how I scorn them;

or how I dance for their frightened,

unawakened, sweet

women.

-- Diane Wakoski

Hap Notes: In the 70s Diane Wakoski (born 1937) was a smoldering volcano of a poet who wrote things about men that were shockingly fierce and outspoken. She dedicated her book, The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems (published in 1971) "...to all those men who betrayed me at one time or another in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles and break their necks." She supported herself for many years by traveling across the country giving readings and selling her infamous Black Sparrow Press Books out of the trunk of her car.

Wakoski went to Berkeley at a time when the "Beats" were out in San Francisco feeling their way along to a new more relaxed form of poetic expression. Wakoski was part of poet Thom Gunn's poetry workshops. She is associated with the "Deep Image" poets and "The Movement" although she's really not part of any one school, she always, for better or worse, shoots straight from the hip. (I'll never forget that Wakoski picture of her with a gun on one of her poetry reading records (top, left)-- she looked so determined and in control.)

Wakoski is often overlooked in contemporary poetry anthologies and it's a darn shame because she influenced so many women to be poets, and to be frank, to be angry, justifiably confused and betrayed by their victimization at the hands of male dominated society. These are words we hardly ever talk about anymore in mixed company but her poetry still rings true in many ways. I think we scared men with all this anger and you don't want to scare the dominant gorilla in the jungle. Wakoski liked men, she just got tired of their B.S.

Wakoski still gives readings with her charming lilting cadence and she's still a red hot coal with less of the, sometimes irrational, anger she had in her 20s and 30s. She has been Poet In Residence at Michigan State since 1975 where she also teaches creative writing.

In "Belly Dancer" Wakoski stares at a very difficult subject- the way women perceive their bodies and how men react when they see a woman exposing her sexuality. She says a very interesting thing when she points out that men "could never satisfy" a woman's true sexual nature. We have been conditioned to think that men have the greater sex drive but that's not strictly what she's talking about. It's not just the drive, it's the sensual, earthy, passionate experience that she wants to open up for women. She's saying that women may have a deeper more primal passion than men and that women often feel this and are frightened by it. Interesting that she uses the snake as an example with its male connotations and its role in the "fall" of man.

What would happen if women treated sex as something that they deserved as a full sensual experience? What if that was the measure of someone's sex life; rich, deep, soul-shaking quality and not quantity? It's a lot easier to "button up" and just live with the status quo. Why unbutton a tribe full of voluptuaries who dance just for the joy of movement and the feeling of the silk? Women would be so much harder to contain.

If this poem strikes you as somewhat antiquated because contemporary values are different from when this poem was written you really need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid, sis.

Wakoski's poetry has often been criticized as "whining" or "being too much the victim." I suppose this is because now we live in a society where men respect women's sexuality and treat us as intellectual equals and allow our passions to soar with respect and would never degrade us by making pornographic movies or photos. HELLO? Wakoski's poetry has the complaints of a victim because she, like many women, could not always break from the stereotypes of "acceptable" women and at the same time loathed it. Our culture is very good at helping women to loathe themselves for either their bodies, their beauty (or lack thereof) and their interests.

I think her ferocity and frustration still has a valid place in the culture. She's not a man-hater-- but she certainly grew to hate a few of them. Nobody with any brains in the women's movement in the 70s hated men; they hated the presumption of what a woman was, the straight-jacket women were fitted with, which men were brought up to think was right. Men would have a much better time with "unbuttoned" women. It would be better for everybody all the way around. That's what the women's movement was really about.

Here's a good Wakoski quote talking about her book Emerald Ice: “My themes are loss, justice, truth, transformation, the duality of the world, the possibilties of magic, and the creation of beauty out of ugliness. My language is dramatic, oral, and as American as I can make it. I am impatient with stupidity, bureaucracy, and organizations. Poetry, for me, is the supreme art of the individual using language to show how special, different, and wonderful his perceptions are. With verve and finesse. With discursive precision. And with utter contempt for pettiness of imagination or spirit.”

You can find more Wakoski poetry here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/diane-wakoski

Numbers 59 and 60: Keats, Shelley, Hunt- The Super Bowl of Poetry

To the Nile
Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

--John Keats

The Nile

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,--
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

-- Leigh Hunt

To The Nile

Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,

And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles

Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. 

Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells

By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells

Urging those waters to their mighty end.

O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level

And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest 

That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil

And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.

Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,

Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hap Notes: Okay, you're just sitting around with your pals one night and you decide to have a little contest. Each of you will write a sonnet on the same topic. It must be in sonnet form. You get 15 minutes. Now, go! (if you really want to try this, here's a little refresher on sonnet forms: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet )

The above three poems were what Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and John Keats (1795-1821) came up with in 15 minutes on the chosen subject: the Nile.

If you need a little help understanding the poems here's a few clues, when Keats says "swarts" he's saying "swarthy", in Hunt's poem Seostris was a legendary king of Egypt, Shelley's Aethiopian is just Ethiopian spelled differently- also areal is aerial.

So who won? Well, you decide. Hunt, while a minor poet, wrote a couple of my favorite verses ("Jenny Kissed Me" and "Abou Ben Adhem"). His competition is not to be taken lightly.

Which one do I like better? Hmmmm. It changes every time I read them. I initially thought Keats had the weaker poem, but reading them just now I thought it was very good. I love Shelley so I lean, again, toward him. Hunt's poem is extremely good, though. I guess, today, I'll say I think the stronger poem is Hunt's with Shelley running a very close second.

Here's a little hint for understanding and reading Romantic poetry. Read it aloud. Pause with each comma. Stop for split second at each period. If there is no comma or period read it straight through, regardless of the stanza's form, to end. In other words, even if the line is, for example Keats' line "Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste"-- don't stop your recitation at "taste" end it after "The pleasant sunrise. " It will all become clearer that way.

I'm counting this entry as two poems today. If you think I'm cheating, I'll add another one on Dec. 9 when we get there.

I'd love to see your 15 minute sonnet. You can post them here. I'll do one, too. And let's have the subject be the same as Hunt, Shelley and Keats: the Nile. Remember, you only get 15 minutes. Should be fun. No, really.

Number 58: Archibald MacLeish "Ars Poetica"

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds
-
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs
-
A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be

-- Archibald MacLeish

Hap Notes: "Ars Poetica" means "the art or nature of poetry" and this well-anthologized poem by MacLeish (1892-1982) gives us pictures in place of didactic instructions. Both Aristotle and Homer wrote on "ars poetica" but MacLeish's is certainly the prettiest one.

This poem surely contains all the ins and outs of writing poetry. Some of the lines are perfect. Some, like "A poem should not mean/But be" will have more than a few readers rolling their eyes in disgust and thinking of statements like one made at an 'Obama-Care' forum to "keep your government hands off my medicare." Huh? Because Medicare is a government run program and this poem already is, isn't it? Or maybe it's more like logician Raymond Smullyan's book titles i.e. This Book Needs No Title and What Is The Title Of This Book? I'm picking nits, though, because of the poem's over-exposure in almost every decent poetry anthology. Even I roll my eyes at the line somewhat.

If you've never read the poem, I suppose I've just spoiled if for you. Not as bad as if I'd said "Rosebud is the sled" but still, I apologize if I have. The last line served as a "statement" for the modern aesthetic for way too many years and "statements" get jumped on. MacLeish's poetry and plays are full of ideas and not all of them are going to fly for everyone.

MacLeish was an exceptional intellect. He majored in English at Yale. He graduated number one in his class at Harvard Law. He hung out in Paris with all the famous ex-pats of the day, Stein and Hemingway and Fitzgerald et al. He won three Pulitzers.

What MacLeish did that stands head and shoulders above his writing, to me, anyway, was his refreshment of the Library of Congress to which he was appointed librarian during Roosevelt's presidency. He shot some life into it. He started the process to have an American Poet Laureate and he even once named Louise Bogan to the post when she was clearly hostile to his writing. He was a fair-minded guy with a penchant for books and the arts.

He reorganized the Library of Congress with such a good shake that he winnowed down the extraneous, reassigned the qualified and got it running properly. There is no amount of thanks that we can give that is too great for this. He blew the dust off the place and made it a repository for the mysteries of the human mind. He said, "If books are reports on the mysteries of the world and our existence in it, libraries remain reporting on the human mind, that particular mystery, still remains as countries lose their grandeur and universities are not certain what they are."

When he was appointed to the post, by the by, he was a controversial figure seeing as he had no experience or education in the library sciences. Roosevelt wanted a poet with some feeling for the arts. The American Library Association was a bit taken aback by this. Of course, it turns out that 34 of the 37 people who had taken the post before MacLeish had no library science training either. You know what they say when a new manager comes in; a new broom sweeps clean. Sometimes this is good, sometimes the good gets swept away with the bad and things get messed up. The library, it turns out, needed a good healthy sweep.

I find MacLeish's poetry somewhat hard to like. It is redolent with ideas which often trip up the lines. His mind is a finely tuned instrument, but one can see it clicking off categories in the work. It is obvious that he loved the form, though, and there beats a noble heart.

Here's a good MacLeish quote: "Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered."

And another in honor of the upcoming Super Bowl: "Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words. "

You can find more MacLeish here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/archibald-macleish

Number 57: Walt Whitman "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer"

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

-- Walt Whitman

Hap Notes: Let's do a little repair work for good old Walt Whitman (1819-1892). I know that the general (and probably correct) interpretation of this poem is that Walt is having a bit of trouble with science as far as "learn'd" astronomers go. He says that science is sucking all the beauty out of the stars. I have heard it disparagingly interpreted as Whitman being anti-intellectual and against scientific progress. But, what I think he's saying is that he sat through a particularly boring lecture that every body applauded because the lecturer gave out a lot of scientific "facts." You know how people love "facts."

I think Walt is just bored the way you get bored at a "power point" lecture with one too many dopey Venn diagrams about consumers rather than just going out and talking to customers. Do you think Walt would have hated listening to Carl Sagan or Richard Feynman or Brian Greene? I highly doubt it. It's the lecturer that is the problem. The speaker, as far as Whitman can tell, is not excited in the least about the subject. "Charts" and "diagrams" and "columns"! I'm bored just imagining it. How many times has a dull lecture sucked the life out of a good book or poem? Walt just heard a very poor speaker. Wish he was around today to see how heart-poundingly exciting science is now. I don't think he'd have written this particular poem today, do you? (Well, unless he had my astronomy teacher in college who ended each sentence he said with the words "in here." So he would say "You will see a slight change in the positioning of the stars out there, in here." It was quite disconcerting and hard to follow, God bless him.)

I know I'm doing a lot of projecting here but I hardly think we can hold Whitman responsible for the irritating suspicion with which many people regard the sciences. Most of those people are highly suspicious of poetry and the arts, too. Whitman plowed so much new ground that it would be ridiculous to label him as old fashioned. But perhaps his lecturer was. I rest my somewhat shaky case.

Everybody knows Whitman, if not from reading him at least by reputation. His high-flying free verse electrified poetry. He worked on his famous Leaves of Grass from its initial publication in 1855 until its publication in final form in 1889, there were six editions between those dates (if you want to see each one page by page go here: www.whitmanarchive.org/ ).He was always tinkering with it. Whitman did not create "free verse" but he was a key figure in making it incredibly popular. He's the penultimate American with his free-wheelin' style, big heart and democratic views.

Whitman started out as a printer's apprentice (they called them "printer's devils") and later was a journalist. His compassion with Civil War wounded veterans was such that he stayed and worked at the hospitals in Washington for 11 years. He struggled to make a living but spent almost all he could get on things for the soldiers he visited. Whitman's verse was thought unruly and obscene in his own lifetime but certainly influenced poets from all eras and most particularly the "Beats."

Silly side-note: I can never see the name Walt Whitman now without hearing Jon Spencer's voice singing the final verse on "Big Road," (from Extra Width) the Blues Explosion song that lists the different exits on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Here's a nice Whitman quote: "The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people."

You can find more Whitman here: www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126

Number 56: Josephine Jacobsen "Gentle Reader

Gentle Reader

Late in the night when I should be asleep
under the city stars in a small room
I read a poet. A poet: not
A versifier. Not a hot-shot
ethic-monger, laying about
him; not a diary of lying
about in cruel cruel beds, crying.
A poet, dangerous and steep.

O God, it peels me, juices me like a press;
this poetry drinks me, eats me, gut and marrow
until I exist in its jester's sorrow,
until my juices feed a savage sight
that runs along the lines, bright
as beasts' eyes. The rubble splays to dust:
city, book, bed, leaving my ear's lust
saying like Molly, yes, yes, yes O yes.

-- Josephine Jacobsen


Hap Notes: Josephine Jacobsen (1908-2003) wrote fiction but her true love was poetry. This poem is a good illustration of that. Born in Canada she lived most of her life in Maryland. She attended no college and her first book of verse was published when she was 32. Most of her poetry was published after she was 50. She was part of no school or "set" or academic enclave or conclave. Her work is pristine and delicious. She wrote fine and thoughtful poetry criticism, too.

She was Poet Laureate (or "consultant" as they now call it and I sort of petulantly ignore from its business-like jerkiness) of the U.S from 1971-1973. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994 and was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 1997. In her tenure as consultant she grieved the lack of African-American poets attending the Library of Congress events and the infrequency of their being published. She had a considerable outreach program to change that which was fairly successful.

In "Gentle Reader" she calls up Molly Bloom from James Joyce's Ulysses to describe her ecstasy at reading a poem. Here's a little piece of Molly Bloom's soliloquy:

"the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower"

Joyce has, maybe, two periods in the whole chapter in which Molly speaks, forming his own sort of prose-poem as you read it. (Breaking off briefly to say that this is the only kind of prose-poem you will read here. I don't understand the term very well because to me, there is poetic prose and there's poetry. I don't see the necessity of having another genre. I have read some wonderful prose poems, I just always lament that they didn't finish it. It's like going to a painter's house and seeing a bunch of primed canvases with a pencil sketches on them- you can see it's going to be an interesting painting. But why won't he/she finish it? If you want to sketch on canvas, that's fine but it isn't called a painting, is it? A prose poem is a prose sketch, isn't it? How is it a poem? Just musing....)

Much of Jacobsen's poetry deals with the experience of being human and the natural world.

Here's a good Jacobsen quote: "I don't really value very highly statements from a poet in regard to her work. I can perhaps best introduce my own poetry by saying what I have not done, rather than defining what I have done. I have not involved my work with any clique, school, or other group: I have tried not to force any poem into an overall concept of how I write poetry when it should be left to create organically its own individual style; I have not been content to repeat what I have already accomplished or to establish any stance which would limit the flexibility of discovery. I have not confused technical innovation, however desirable, with poetic originality or intensity. I have not utilized poetry as a social or political lever. I have not conceded that any subject matter, any vocabulary, any approach, or any form is in itself necessarily unsuitable to the uses of poetry. I have not tried to establish a reputation on any grounds but those of my poetry."

You can find more Jacobsen here: www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2007&iss=2&cat=poetry&page=jacobsen

Number 55: Shel Silverstein "Forgotten Language"

Forgotten Language

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

-- Shel Silverstein

Hap Notes: Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) was an extraordinary talent. He was an artist, a writer, a poet and a musician. He wrote popular songs and extraordinary children's books. He was a man who genuinely enjoyed life. Most people know him as the author of The Giving Tree, a book that is so fundamental to grade schools and counselor's offices that it's hard to imagine when it wasn't around.

As a songwriter he wrote "The Unicorn," the staple of the Irish Rovers. He wrote songs that permeated (and still do) the radio like "Sylvia's Mother" and "The Cover of the Rolling Stone" and "Put Another Log on the Fire." He wrote the Johnny Cash hit "A Boy Named Sue." He wrote "I'm Checkin' Out," the song Meryl Streep sings in Postcards From the Edge. He wrote dozens more than this- I'm just throwing out a few examples.

When I was in junior high school, my geography teacher used to read to us from Silverstein's Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, a publication decidedly not for children. We loved it. It was hilariously funny and clever. Silverstein wrote a lot of adult content being a travel journalist for Playboy magazine for many years in addition to the many cartoons he drew for them.

He was sort of all over the place, writing plays, light verse, children's books, songs and the like. One thing that permeates his work is an amused and wise positivity. He wasn't naive, far from it, he was just hopeful. It's worth noting that every once in a while some library will ban Silverstein's books because the poetry talks about things like breaking a dish instead of drying it to get out of a chore or some monster that eats children. It's always disheartening to see a library forget how smart children are.

The poem I selected is rather uncharacteristic of Silverstein in that it's rather wistful and a bit sad. My favorite poem by Silverstein when I was a kid was "A thousand hairy savages/ Sitting down to lunch/ Gobble gobble glup glup/ Munch munch munch." I almost just used that instead.

But this one always calls to me because I believe him, and I believe I (and you) used to know that language, too. As we grow older, we lose our abilities to talk about anything but "real life"- that thing everyone wants to make so dull with talk of "ramping up" and "up-sized solution-oriented initiatives" or "robust actuating infrastructures" and a "centralized global workforce." Seriously, how do people say that glop with a straight face? It's all soul-sucking utter nonsense.

I'll take the common sense of Where the Sidwalk Ends or A Light in the Attic. I'd rather be where polar bears live in your refrigerator and you need to go out with a jar and a rag and polish the stars. I've mentioned before that "children's" and "light" verse should both be genre names used with more respect. Any verses that make you smile and think are precious. We're all still children somewhere inside of us. If you've lost that then you've really forgotten an important language.

Here's a good Shel Silverstein quote: "Never explain what you do. It speaks for itself. You only muddle it by talking about it."

You can find the official website for Silverstein here: www.shelsilverstein.com/indexSite.html