Hey everyone. Hope you enjoyed the video and I'd love to hear if you have any additional thoughts on Silverstein. The bonus Patreon video will be coming out soon. I had some technical difficulties while filming and realized a little too late. But I think I've pinpointed the issue and should be able to take another crack at it as soon as I have the time. Until then, there will be a little deleted joke from the last video. Anyhow, thank you all, as always, for your continued support!
If you want to see the ACTUAL most problematic thing Silverstein wrote, it wasn't a kid's poem. Look up "Father of a Boy Named Sue", which he spun off from his popular song "Boy Named Sue" made famous by Johnny Cash. It's so over the top cruel and intentionally disgusting I found it hard to believe it came from the same man who'd written so many of my favorite childhood poems. Silverstein had done grim, bawdy, and gory before, so it's not like he'd been completely soft-edged until this, but this poem just feels so openly meanspirited. It retroactively made me enjoy the original less, and I almost wish I'd never heard of it.
He’s quite an interesting artist and he is worthy of immense analysis. More Silverstein videos please; his relationship with absurdism and cynicism is decades ahead of his “peers”
When I was in kindergarten I was unfortunately the victim of a kidnapping that left me utterly traumatized for a long time. What really gets me is that I remember reading Shel Silverstein's books not a year later when I was in 1st grade. Many of the poems in this video were familiar to me, but not "Kidnapped." I assume our teacher skipped that one for obvious reasons... If only I had gotten to read that poem back then, I think it would have resonated with me and comforted me, just to see my experience written down like that. The kidnapping occurred in the middle of the school year and I vividly remember returning to school for the first time in months with an entirely changed outlook on life and newly self-deprecating inner dialogue. I remember nervously lying to my teacher, saying I had instead been "visiting somebody." But another thing I remember, is that I felt totally isolated and unique compared to my peers who couldn't even comprehend what I had gone through (and to be clear, my experience was nothing like the kidnapping described in the poem, but still!). Honestly, this is just another reason I'm vehemently anti-censorship. Silencing these kinds of works because they feature violent language does not inherently "protect" the children reading it. There are kids out there like me who *need* to know that they're not alone. They need to find works of art that express them through words they can't yet find themselves. They're being told their experiences should be silenced, locked in a box with the key thrown away. Maybe this is a little too personal and serious for a RUclips comment, maybe. That's just my 2 cents; let's be like Silverstein and treat our youth with the respect they deserve.
I was never kidnapped, but I sure could have benefited from reading some of his poems like whatif and the skin suit one (to know that others out there feel like they're just putting on an act, because I was undiagnosed autistic and ADHD and trying to fit in) because knowing I wasn't alone in my experiences would have helped me accept myself and maybe open up about it to others (a big maybe, I didn't even tell my best friend since I was 4 when my dad was in the hospital for brain cancer which he survived when I was in grade 2)
idk, I mean, it's impossible to have not heard children talk to each other, because we were all children once!!! At best it's a serious case of amnesia, and likely, a lot less innocent or well-meaning than that.
@@squirlmy”Loss of innocence” is actually EXACTLY what I was thinking (but you worded it better lol). I can see 10 year old me reading it and not being creeped out but finding it a silly over-explanation of why I was late. Particularly also as children we can be bad liars so we tend to add as much detail as possible thinking it would sound more believable
"When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue With orange and lavender spots?" That one always stuck with me. I remember feeling that the poem was about embracing the unexpected.
Sounds like being autistic to me. You try to learn the rules and signals, and then are suddenly confronted with something completely baffling. Bonus points when everyone else knows exactly what it means. I've not expressed that well, but it's the sort of question I find myself dealing with quite often.
I love it. To me, it's about how we try and make it seem like the world is so simple and weall made, but can surprise you at anuy time. Just like you said, having to deal with the unexpected.
I had no idea shel Silverstein was controversial. My mom was a very conservative parent and didn’t let me do much, but she had a copy of his poems and had us learn them in school. I remember them fondly.
Same with very conservative parents. I wasn't allowed to watch the scenes in Snow White with the witch, but I was allowed to read the poem about a kid getting kidnapped and held at gunpoint.
“Skin Stealer” always reminded me of how it felt to have meltdowns and anxiety attacks. I had both from a very young age, and I usually lashed out pretty badly when they happened. It felt like I was someone else. That wasn’t me, it was all of the everything stealing my skin and being horrible. I’m a good person, I don’t yell or hit people or break things. Years after I forgot about that poem, it still feels the exact same as it did when I was 8 and couldn’t figure out why I was so mad.
My youngest sister has anxiety and oppositional defiance disorder. My Violet is one of the most kind and gentle people that I know. But she had a really hard time as a kid. None of the teachers followed the IEP plan to help her through transitions, or providing her a space to be alone and decompress. When Violet talked back and got angry with anyone, she literally couldn't help it. She would be apologizing in between bursts of anger, and then came the guilt and shame spiral, which was so sad. She is an adult now and she seems to be taking really good care of herself. Anyways, I'm not trying to diagnose you or imply anything, but your comment made me think about how much I used to worry about her, and recognizing the anger, the guilt and regret, and the sadness that she carried on her shoulders. I hope that you have been able to learn some things about yourself since then, so that you know the best way to take care of yourself. I hope that didn't come off as condescending or anything, I am just trying to convey that I hope things have gotten better for you since that confusing time in your life as a child. 🖤🖤
this was sort of how i initially interpreted the poem, rather than it being a kid trying to get out of trouble. it read to me as someone genuinely feeling like they cant control their behavior, whatever the reason may be.
@@OtakuUnitedStudiocame here to say the same exact thing. Sometimes I feel so ashamed of how I acted after a bad manic episode. I don’t shift the blame but the feeling of shame makes me so embarrassed
my interpretation of as a child of the “kidnapped” poem was that schools are so strict when it comes to tardiness or absences that the child needed to make up such an insane vivid story to get away with being late. When I was younger, I was frequently late to school for reasons that were almost completely outside of my control, and I would always get in trouble. I sometimes felt that the only explanation that the school would accept that wouldn’t cost me would be an outright emergency like the one in the poem
Why do we pretend that kids WOULDN'T come up with something this crazy when they're trying to come up for an excuse for something when the consequences are high? It's not like kids understand the levity of saying "I got kidnapped" in the real world, or even all of the extreme things mentioned in the poem (which, let's be real, we'd all seen on TV at some point). It's just a story! I say this as one of those kids who also came up with some wild stuff that got me sent to the school counselor. I didn't grasp the implications, I was just trying to get out of trouble, hah
My dad brought me to school when I was in elementary school, and I was regularly punished for being late as a little little kid, as if it was my fault my dad didn't start getting ready to take me in until after school had started. I didn't realize how, uh, kinda bad that was until very recently. I mean, it made sense to me as a kid, if something bad happens you get punished; it had nothing to do with whether it was your fault. I guess that's honestly a better representation of the real world, but not a great way to get a kid thinking about the consequences of their (or someone else's) actions lol.
@@jerssh just another example of schools trying to make people placid towards injustice :( don't question why you're in trouble, just accept it. it sucks
I think it is hugely beneficial for children to be introduced to negative emotions and concepts like anxiety, especially in a safe environment like poetry. These kids are inevitably going to experience anxiety and sadness so if you can teach them that it's okay it happens to everyone and how to deal with it going forward, they're going to have a much better grasp on these concepts than a child who was never educated on feelings because their parents thought it would be harmful.
Agreed. It’s so isolating when nobody tells you about these things because you develop this mindset where you don’t want to reach out because you think you’re the only one going through it. When you know you’re not alone, you feel validated & you look to others like you for guidance. It’s a net positive.
I disagree entirly. It should be done in anything but poetry. IF you've got something to say, it should be said so it can be unambiguously understood. Not buried under layer after layer of metaphor and similie using archaic rhymic patterns like some kind of weird hyroglyphs in a pre-rosetta stone world.
@@MeepChangeling Perhaps you're being sarcastic, or trolling. Or perhaps you honestly didn't notice that you used a simile to make an argument against the use of similes. In any case, your meaning is not unambiguously understood.
@MeepChangeling I love the accidental hypocrisy you just did. What is your opinion on the mass spread of metaphors and similes in music? Stop that too?
I grew up badly bullied, with a dysfunctional family, and a learning delay. I couldn’t read very well for all of elementary school. Silverstein’s work was deeply comforting to me as a kid, and it’s what taught me to read well. The Giving Tree always resonated really heavily with me as a kid. I think Kidnapped did too, because I remember being awed by it. I hadn’t read anything like it at that age (7ish). There was something so impactful about being taken seriously as a reader vs a lot of the other children’s lit. It’s something special.
The Giving Tree was such a special book for me too. Makin' me tear up thinking about it now. My kindergarten teacher gave us all gifts at the end of the year and she chose that book for me. I really wish I still had that copy but I think it was gifted to another family as I got older so at least it had an impact on another kid's life.
@@autumnmatthew3185 same, I had a relatively safe upbringing and didn't feel any serious worries about being kidnapped, so as a kid I read it as an adult understanding how much kids like me hated school in a wildly exaggerated way.
No one is gonna read this, so I feel okay sharing a memory. My father, from whom I am now estranged, loved Shel Silverstein. Had all the books, and read them to me frequently when I was small. I have a vivid memory of, when I was perhaps 8 or 9, reading A Light in the Attic while laying on our trampoline. After a while of reading, I went inside to get some water but didn't go back outside till the next day. It turns out it had rained overnight, and the poor book was a soggy mess on the trampoline. I remember being so distraught, just completely a mess; I LOVED that book, so so much, and read it to myself dozens of times, even memorized half the poems. And as a kid, I was terrified of ruining things or messing up because it almost always ended in being yelled at and strongly physically disciplined. But when I told my father what happened, he only told me it was okay, and that we have lots of books and it would be alright. I can't forgive the things he's done, but in that one little memory I think that maybe he understood my complete and utter despair in the loss of one of my favorite books and comforted me. I often speak of him as though he's died, and this little memory is one I keep for those days that I wish I had a dad.
I dont know what he did to you or why your estranged so maybe its out of place but its almost always worth it to reconnect with your folks before they die. Good luck in life
Your story is so beautiful and has brought me to tears. In all these little disparate ways, I feel the vivid life behind your story. I remember some summer long ago when I left a little Transformers choose your own adventure book out in my Uncle's back yard, on a rock near his pool. Much like the mosaic of sun and storm we had just today in Albany where I live, a little squall sent the gathered family in for a while. But I had forgotten the book. That booked had belonged to my brothers before me, and the Transformers stuff that they grew up with seemed like precious antique heirlooms. My dad loves book collecting and taught me to try and take care of books. I remember the feeling of that soggy, mushy book, that devastation, that shame. The heavy air in the grass, the grit of that rock － I love sitting on big rocks － the lush lumps of clover and dandelion that filled the summers around my uncle's pools... were much the same as would grow around the trampolines that my brother's friends were lucky enough to have in their yards. I loved being alone on a trampoline, come evening in the woods, not even bouncing, but just rocking, looking up at the sea of leaves above. About one year ago, my girlfriend's father passed away. When she and I first met in highschool, like me, she didn't have many people she could really connect to. She had her father though - who she'd see come weekends when she escaped from the clutches of her prison-guard of a mother to go to her grandmother's place. Her dad was her world; everything that excited her - music, art, comedy - she had learned from him, she shared with him. Those early days when we just started talking - when she'd chime in from the corner when I was just talking to myself really - she'd show me stuff like the strange mixes of music and media he'd record, bit by bit let me into her world. And as the more I wandered into the mists of her heart, I felt always the warmth of the light he had sparked in her. I met him many times, in those years we were together in college, before they became estranged. I was away for a while in Japan when she stopped talking to him, for the longest time wouldn't even fully explain to me what happened. He was an alcoholic, and it got so bad... she just couldn't have a relationship with him anymore. Now he's gone, and we had to clean out all is meager worldly belongings, all the movies and music he loved, all the original art and music he had left behind. He was a beautiful man, that I wish we could still have in our life. For so long though, even before death took him, he was already gone though. He in his room a Beanie Baby teddy, "#1 Dad" on a little necktie, no doubt given to him some father's day by his only daughter. He kept it there, by his bedside, with a picture of her. He missed her. Yet he wouldn't change. He just couldn't change. Something was just too broken inside him, and I don't know what we could have done about it. I just don't know, and now I will never know. I understand, if maybe indirectly, exactly what that duality of love and estrangement feels like. One day your father will be gone, and if by then you're still estranged, you may feel regret. But it's so hard to know what we really could have changed. This passed week, I spilled a giant glass of water all over the wide open pages of a favorite book of mine. I was just goofing around with my girlfriend when I knocked the cup over. It's a beautiful reprint of an old and rare book on the history of the O&W railroad and Sullivan county NY, possible to replace but not cheap. I ruined it. I utterly ruined it. I tried drying it, but the pages that took a soaking just will never be the same. I was angry, stomping, ready to smash things, just so angry at myself. － the feeling of the crisp glossy sheen is gone, stains and wrinkles around the edges of those affected pages. Somehow though, I find the book more beautiful now.
@@dongvermine I was 13 when I got kicked out, after years of being stripped of my privacy, forced to do every household chore, and beaten daily. I won’t b apologizing for anything.
Just wow. I always thought of Silverstein as "the poet that I read when I was little with the silly drawings." But I think that "Nobody" poem is the most beautiful and profound collection of words I've ever read.
I think it's directed towards introverts, we're the Nobody we create when we push people away, until we can't go on supporting that lifestyle. Pairs nicely with "My Guitar"
i interpreted it as saying that no matter how lonely or alone we may feel, if you just take a moment and walk around your home you will be reminded that your family are in your life and love you. I can imagine how nice of a message that is for a child to hear.
"Whatif" is my favourite Silverstein poem that you brought up. I think it's very encouraging. By contrasting very normal, relatable fears with certain more outlandish ones in each couplet, it's like he's telling kids that all fears, or at least most, are outlandish. You shouldn't be afraid of flunking in school or having crooked teeth, any more than you should fear your head shrinking. At least, you shouldn't let that fear change the way you live your life. And he frames the Whatifs as little creatures that bring intrusive thoughts at night; he's telling you that the thoughts aren't yours, and you can get rid of them if you choose. And while the anxieties they bring are destructive, they're also normal enough to experience that kids should know how to recognize them and learn to shut the Whatifs out.
Same. I have ADHD and PTSD, so I deal with intrusive thoughts constantly. *_Constantly._* I'm 40 and only just now switching careers, cuz I spent the entirety of my youth so terrified of going into the "wrong" career that I froze and wound up not really pursuing any of my interests. I worked, but I never considered it a career. My heart wasn't in it. I wish I could be anyone but me.
@@WobblesandBeanI have similar struggles. So far, EMDR and buddhism have been my best boons, but sometimes I convince myself I’ll someday be “fixed” or something.
Sendak was very clear about this as well. Obviously. But also in those fantastic angry interviews. If you can get your hands on The Comics Journal biography/memorial, he tells an absolutely gutting story I heard him tell at Berkeley, which he said he had never told and had never had any plans to tell. By telling it, he could relieve the gaslighting of someone on the panel and bring her peace from a lifetime of pain, and that in a weird way it was a shared trauma between people who had never met. Kismet. I'm so glad he got it out late in life, and so glad it was included in the volume. It's heartbreaking the level of shaming and gaslighting he went through as a kid. Monsters are so real that it's too much for me. i never intended to move to Salem, but boy howdy do I get to confront it.
Loved the video. Your reaction to the poem Kidnapped made me think of something Neil Gaiman has said about his book Coraline and kids' reactions vs parents' reactions to it. Paraphrasing, Gaiman noted that parents would often be much more unsettled by Coraline than their kids would be, and the kids would see an adventure or a fight the protagonist of the story could win where parents would see danger. I did read Kidnapped as a kid and now as an adult the way I think about it is that the visceral language is a product of a kind of imagination without regard for real world severity that kids have. Kids incorporate violence into their imagination and play but they don't have the context for the pain that would go with it and so they don't recoil from it in the same way adults do. I also think it's relevant that Kidnapped was written in the 80s, when parenting norms were changing in reactions to fears both real and imagined about strangers giving kids drugs, kidnapping, etc. As a kid I found this poem funny and thought the humor came from the kid repeating back the kind of story their parents or teachers would tell them as an excuse to get out of school-- "don't take candy from strangers or you'll get kidnapped!" is not something that is ever or was ever likely to happen, but having it repeated constantly combined with kids generally getting a lot of enjoyment from imagined violence, and it seems a pretty logical thing (to a kid) to whip out as a late for school excuse.
According to Gaiman, his publisher couldn’t determine if Coraline was a book for children or adults, so his editor (I think it was his editor) gave it to her daughter and asked if it scared her. She said no, and the book was deemed safe for kids. Years later, Gaiman was seated next to that same girl after Coraline (the movie) was made and recounted that same story. The editor’s daughter recalled that she was scared as hell, but she wasn’t going to tell her mother that. If she admitted she was scared, the book would be taken away, and she wouldn’t know how it ends! Source: one of the essays from The View From the Cheat Seats
I definitely read the poem myself as a child as well - a light in the attic, sidewalk ends, and falling up were all well-loved in my house as a kid - but I can't say it made enough of an impression on me as a child for me to remember it in specific. I agree that it feels like the type of thing that as a kid would just seem funny to me - that a kid would make up such an outlandish, terrible story just to explain being late to school. I can see why it reads as somewhat visceral as an adult but I don't think.. most kids would see it as any different than any other story of danger and adventure
I had a similar impression from Kidnapped! as a kid in the 90s. I remember feeling tense when reading it, then all of that deflated with the punchline and I found it really funny. It reminded me of all the awful news I'd been overhearing and all the over-the-top warnings adults would give me.
I read a lot of silverstien growing up. My favorite is invitation (first poem in one of his collections... where the sidewalk ends??) I've just begun reading some of hid poems to my daughter, so your video came to me at the perfect time; I've been reviewing each of his poems, trying to match which are right for her at the moment. She's been reading since she was three, so she's ready for the vocabulary and ideas, but even some Disney movies are too scary for her. It's a delicate line.
I agree with your assessment of kidnapped, and see nothing problematic about it. It reflects children giving any excuse to avoid punitive measures brought forth over performing a mistake. Which further reflects the inherent problem often found in parenting where punitive measures do not makes kids better people, it just teaches them to lie and make excuses. No, Kidnapped is quite relevant and a bona fide good children's poem. The only thing problematic about it, is that some use it as an example to invalidate the work as a whole, which is so egregiously preposterous, that nothing more need be said regarding that.
I wonder if when they "stand up and tell you *Nobody*.." is their best friend, if they're addressing or discarding them. I read this as lonely kid, so I read it slightly different, but your interpretation fits like a glove.
I saw it as a plea from the introverts. Sometimes what calms people down is having time to yourself alone to think, to dream, to comfort yourself with your own hobbies. It can be triggering anxiety when you look all over and cant find a quiet place to be alone, the Nobody was so nice to have around
"Kidnapped" made me cry when I was a child (and still does). This poem describes my mornings in an abusive household better then I had the words for back then. Its one that made me love his writing because he knew! He KNEW what it was to be that child in an abusive household.
To offer an alternative perspective- I forget when I read "kidnapped" first. I think around 8-10. To me I immediately understood it was a kid lying to excuse their lateness. I never even considered it was controversial until much later. But then again, I was immersed in media like Home Alone, Don Bluth cartoons and was reading some YA books that had kids lying to parents a bunch.
I never read Silverstein until now, but as someone who was also from a dysfunctional/abusive home, I immediately interpreted it the same as you did. The shame I felt as a kid, chronically tardy and usually because my family couldn't go a day without some kind of emotional eruption that left everyone feeling rotten.
This is such a different, extreme, and deep way to resonate with that poem. I'm sorry for you struggle, and it definitly gives me that different, flipped perspective on it.
@@myrpok as a chronically late person, I STILL think of excuses this wild 😂 I totally understood it was meant to be a convoluted excuse by a little kid
'Skin Stealer' became my favorite poem as a preschooler. The brilliance of Shel Silverstein includes the fact that I was able to completely understand most of Shel's poems even at that age but the meanings became more profound as I got older. To be able to fully find a piece of writing at two different ages is quite special. I appreciate Shel's writing. Also, have to say, if your teacher could see how well loved that copy is, she wouldn't mind that you kept it. 😊
In 1983, my elementary school music teacher wrote melodies for several poems of Silverstein. He had even received permission from Silverstein, because we ended up recording them and sendinig it to him (the teacher made this out to a really big deal). I can still remember some of the tunes, especially "There's a polar-y bear, in our fridgedaire, he likes it cuz it's cold in there..."
A band called The Irish Rovers once wrote a melody to his delightful unicorn poem. Some radio stations still play it on St. Patrick's Day, for reasons I don't fully understand.
@@lazmanonearth Because it's a good song performed by a good band and a lot of people really enjoy it. The Irish Rovers were kind of the only band that did traditional Irish music that became kind of mainstream in the US, and that was one of their most popular songs, even if that song in particular wasn't a traditional Irish song. Back in the day lots of their music would be played on St. Patrick's Day, as they were the most popular source for that music, so of course they'd play their most popular songs, as time went on the song became associated with the holiday in the US.
Shel Silverstein always reminds me of my older sister because she loved his books as a child. I remember her reading them and chuckling to herself. They made her feel smart like she was in on the joke, and I think they fostered her rebellious spirit along with her love of words and language. She wrote a lot of clever poems herself that were clearly influenced by his. I found his books a bit unsettling as a child, maybe because I found the drawings crude and creepy. But in middle school, I did a project on Shel Silverstein and learned about his life and art, and that gave me a new-found respect for him as a creative voice. I adore his simple and approachable style. His work can be so profound with so few words. You selected some great ones to read for this video. Makes me want to go back and reread his collections!
My sister and I used to read this book together all the time. We're adults now, and she cut all contact with the family a long time ago. She and I both have a strained relationship with our parents, but I don't know why she cut out me and all our cousins as well. I miss her a lot. I miss my niece and nephew. Wherever they are, I just hope they're happy.
As a preschool teacher, I’m always excited to introduce silverstein to new kids every year. He really taps into something that they understand, and even I still enjoy his poems!
He was a guest at a school I was going to in the 1st grade. I had his books signed by him until they got lost due to the many evictions we had. Meeting him was the only highlight that year. My stepfather started getting far more violent when he got drunk, he also started drinking more. I think he could see that I wasn't having a happy childhood as he seemed to tell me a few stories that I kept to myself mostly. It was things that I felt was very personal. Just remember that no child asks to be born. But remember that parents ask to be taken care of. That was the last thing he said to me. I've carried that with me and have taught that to my children. It was more than likely just telling me that one day I'll be a parent and I have the power to change things for the better. I morphed it to mean never ask of your children more than you have given then many times over. He was an inspiration. I've told you that I've never told anyone else the origin of with the exception of my wife. She also knows what all he told me. I'll tell my kids what all he told me when my daughter reaches her dream of being an author. Both of my kids will learn the origin of kids don't ask to be born when one of them has a kid. I think they'll get a kick out of it, but more than likely won't be surprised.
@@DogDooWinner - thank you for sharing your experience and the profundity of it. Surrounding the topics covered later in this video - I think it is a helpful contribution and aid to new parents that hope to break vicious, sad cycles. Your story gives me hope too that things may yet be different - for the better - because of a learned experience. Parenthood borne of selfless love is such a needed, challenged thing in this world. Thank you.
I met Shel when I was 20 and working at PLAYBOY in the production dept. under John Mastro. Shel was friendly and approachable, but at the time, I didn’t know who or what he had to do with the magazine. Times were different then. Even though my job required me to be behind the scenes, I had to have my picture taken (for potentiality…). Now, I am the matriarch of a family with 5 grown children and 17 grandchildren. My children enjoyed all of Shell’s books, and now those grandchildren old enough to read and understand the poems, also enjoy him. The family is a successful one, blessed with intelligence and humor as well as one motivated by Christian outreach. My kids suffered from the “what if’s”, loved the garbage poem involving Sarah Elizabeth Stout, and they now read those same poems to the next generation who will make a difference. WHO KNEW? Thanks, Shel.❤❤
My dad would read silverstein to me at bedtime. We would laugh, we would sing the unicorn song, we would just enjoy the meter and the rhymes. And this morning...laying in the same bed he read those poems to me almost 30 years later. I'm brought to years by your analysis and by the depth of what was a bedtime book for me. I've always loved silvertseins work. And now I think I'll have to read through them again. And I know I'll be reading them to my kids before bed when that day comes. Thank you.
My grandpa loved Shel Silverstein's books, and gifted the full set of his books to me as a child. I remember he'd mark his favorite poems for me to read. It was like a fun scavenger hunt. I always loved finding his little notes and inscriptions, learning who he was through his favorite poems. I'll never forget flipping through the pages and finding his note saying this was his absolute favorite poem, "The Little Boy And The Old Man". I understood it immediately as a kid, and now, as an adult, it hurts me in so many ways that I couldn't have imagined back then. I love it so so much
I've always been moved by Shel Silverstein's poetry, especially now - but listening to the poem about the Gooloo bird, I burst into tears. I'm a family social worker, and I spend every day trying and failing to help parents with tiny children overcome barrier after barrier to finding stability. I watch my families lose their jobs and their homes, scramble after cuts to their benefits, panic in the face of new pregnancies, or best-case scenario get priced out of my service area entirely. My wife and I moved out of my beloved home town because it has some of the highest rent in the country. We've never lived in an apartment longer than two years, and that's been a rarity. Every year we talk about having children, and every year we decide we just can't do it until our lives are more stable. We'll rent most of our lives if we're lucky and all of them if we're not. We're the most financially secure among everyone we know, and owning a home is a pipe dream. Can't put down roots. Can't even stop to rest. We're a generation of Gooloo birds.
Your story, stories rather, are profoundly... touching, saddening, sobering. For your sake and all the ones you clearly care for so deeply I hope & pray better times will come, they must! The work you do is so important, thank you for what you do.
@@CovenoftheOpenMindplease stop telling them to do this 😭. I’m in the middle of nowhere Tennessee, land here USED to be cheap, until everyone started seemingly mass-migrating from mostly FL and CA about 10 years ago. Now our mountains are getting deforested and pasture lands bulldozed, all so that they can get turned into the lookalike suburbs these people moved from. Looking through land records is devastating, places that sold for 100k 5 or 10 years ago are now 400k+. Everyone I know that grew up here, who’s families have lived here for generations, will only be able to afford homes and land if they are fortunate enough to inherit.
@@CovenoftheOpenMind this is a perfect demonstration of how privilege fails to *attempt* to understand, in favor of making the reality simpler and easier to digest
@@CovenoftheOpenMindyou forgot about the job part of the equation there. land is cheap because there’s no one with money to pay for it in the first place. remote work has unfortunately been the death of this. i say unfortunately because now wealthy white collar workers are driving up the price of land in these areas without contributing at all to the local economy or bringing in new jobs, leaving the former working class inhabitants who barely survived in the first place left with quite literally nowhere to go. they become a servant class since all jobs available to them rely on serving the wealthy in their area, i.e. babysitting or fast food.
A Light in the Attic... to me, it's myself locked in my head. Inescapable. But the light is on, I'm still alive in there. Just hiding because I'm afraid. The thing that gets me is the viewpoint is third-person. Someone else is looking in and seeing the light on. That means someone else can see the real person hiding in there and is telling them that. I think that's far more profound than if it were just about the person musing about being in their own head.
Yeah, the first thing that came to mind for me was someone in a coma, but that's not really an every-day situation unless you live in a soap opera. The more I think about it, it could be seen as the (awkward?) silence that falls between people. You both are thinking your own thoughts, but for whatever reason you keep them to yourselves. It's like a thoughtful acknowledgement of the other person's existence.
Shel Silverstein’s poetry made me feel _SEEN_ as a child! My fears, tears, hopes and wildest dreams were on those pages. He helped me understand myself 🙏🏾 Thank You, Mr Silverstein 🥰 Your memory is a blessing 🕯
The first gift I was given at the hospital when I was born was a copy of Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends. I still have my copy, and it’s survived three floods and many, many move-houses. Shel inspired me to write my own poetry, to create my own wacky drawings and nonsensical stories. I own all of his children’s poetry books, and I remember saving up months of allowances as a child so I could buy my very own hardcover copy of A Light In The Attic. I have a very deep appreciation for Shel’s poetry and even his songwriting; A Boy Named Sue was a song my dad and I used to listen to in the car on road trips when I was really little, maybe seven or eight. I have some of his poems memorized, but one of my favorites was always Boa Constrictor. My grandmother used to bring me to the park as a child and we’d recite it together while she pushed me on the swings. Many fond childhood memories stem from Shel’s works, and I think reading his poetry at a young age is the reason I’m such a thinker today. Shel Silverstein assisted in raising several generations of children and encouraging them to make, to put pen to paper and just create. Even though he died before I was born, I am so thankful for the compilations of poems he created for young audiences.
Great analysis. I loved Silverstein when I was a kid, and it's great to come back to it now. I feel like a lot of this could be brought into conversation with Calvin and Hobbes. There's so much in that comic that fits well with the playfully-mischievous tone of Silverstein. Calvin making up dramatic stories of his teacher as "a Zorgon about to make him into a stew!" seems right in line with the kidnapping poem. And Calvin blowing up his school with T-rexes in fighter jets seems right in line with a story about Abigail wasting away because her parents won't buy her a pony. At the end of the day, when Calvin accidentally causes his dad's car to roll into the ditch, he's broken up about it, and tells his parents, and they forgive him. And at the end of the day, Silverstein's poems are likewise full of "sentiment, depth, and profundity" as you put it. All in all, it seems like Bill Watterson and Silverstein share the attitude that kids can grapple with philosophy just fine (and are doing it all the time). And that they've got enough of a "moral law" in them that they can see something "dramatically naughty" and laugh about it without being influenced toward evil.
Very well said! I absolutely loved Calvin and Hobbes and I attribute my advanced vocabulary as a kid to Bill Watterson, haha. If you haven't watched Renegade Cut's recent video on Bill Watterson, I highly recommend it.
I adore Calvin and Hobbes, and I appreciate what you say. However, I see a big difference between the work of Watterson and Silverstein, possibly because of coming across them both as an adult. It seems to me that Watterson incorporates both the child's and the adult's point of view. To Calvin, Hobbes is a person, a sometimes scary, sometimes annoying, sometimes fun, friend, who never lets him down, and is ultimately in his control (unlike a real friend). To Calvin's parents, and to the adult reader, Hobbes is also a stuffed toy, brought to life by Calvin's vivid imagination. We see Hobbes both ways, in the drawings. The double view reflects the fact that both children and adults can see through each others' eyes, at least some of the time. Adults remember (more or less) being children, and children (more or less) know the difference between real and pretend. The stories speak to me, as an adult, and also to the child still in me. There's a level of wit and nostalgia and reference that you have to be an adult to get. Silverstein, whose writings and drawings I know only from this video, does not really seem to me to be talking to adults at all, unlike most writers for children, who have a sense of answerability to the adults who are the ones actually buying their books. For that reason, his work, while not as sophisticated as Watterson's, seems more edgy and challenging, for both good and bad - he doesn't pull any punches. The "only kidding" couplet at the end of "Kidnapped", for example, seems almost deliberately weak and perfunctory compared to the concrete, detailed imaginary kidnap, which is truly the stuff of nightmares. I can well believe that many, or even most, children could take this in their stride, but it's genuinely unsettling to read as an adult, and the artwork only reinforces this impression. I can see the depth in some of his poems, and some are mind-stretching fun. I would not want to ban him, but I might hesitate to give one of these books to a child. Having said that, my own childhood reading was often wildly unsuitable, including awful, but compelling, Victorian moral tales full of dead children getting their reward, or punishment, in the afterlife (nun-approved, at school!) and things I was much too young for, and it didn't do me much harm. At least, I don't think it did!
My copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends was given to me by my 12th grade high-school math teacher Mr. Daley. I saw it on his desk one day I told him that as I kid I used to always check Silverstein's books from the library cause we couldn't afford to buy me a copy. A 20 dollar book was an unnecessary waste on a single mother salary. He read his favorite poem out loud, "The Little Blue Engine" and signed the first page. "Congratulations on graduating, may your dreams in life come true." That was 14 years ago and I couldn't be happier with my life. Thank you Scott.
Regarding "Kidnapped", I remember reading it as a kid and it reminded me a lot in tone of the book Sideways Stories from Wayside School, as well as a lot of Roald Dahl books, which were written in the same era. I think it was just considered to be more acceptable to include dark and macabre material in children's books at the time, especially for comedic effect.
@@fartgarfunkeljr It literally is a long-winded fib in the context of the poem. But as someone who listened to a true crime podcast once or twice, pretty grim. Not saying publishers should censor it, just grim to think about actual incidents where people have been kidnapped and shoved into vans.
Yeah, and to mention that it was detailed, well that's an imaginative kid who's likely watched too many 70's cheesy action movies. I remember the type when I was a kid. You always had those types who could wind out a fib, and make it serious enough for adults to worry.
So, as an adult, the punchline to Kidnapped really caught me off-guard and is the only one of the ones you read that made me laugh out loud. The humor is dark but I think it lands. It's such an absurdly dark story to tell in order to try and get out of trouble for such a minor thing. I guess I take it as someone making up an excuse for being late and don't really read too deeply into it other than that. As someone who watched a lot of TV and movies as a kid, being able to imagine a scenario like that seems entirely plausible for a modern child.
As a kid who hated school, that poem wasn’t shocking in the slightest to me and made complete sense. I was never one of the ones brave enough to lie out of a school day but I envied the ones that were and thought that sometimes doing whatever it takes just for one day off was perfectly reasonable
yeah, I was an imaginative kid, and its not like parents were really careful about what media we were consuming. I recall a fair few memories of violent TV when I was really young. So I always assumed it was a detailed whooper that the kid was spinning in order to get out of trouble for being late. I think I laughed when I read it as a kid.
my interpretation of Nobody was that you are more loved than you realize. the narrator wakes up to realize he is loved and he finds someone who loves him in each cranny and nook and each place he looked. it is telling you that regardless of circumstance you will find goodness if you look, even if its hidden. i feel like this is speaking to the unique kind of loneliness you get as a child, you feel much more alone because you are new to the world and it is all so big and scary and adults dont really understand what youre feeling, and you dont know how to communicate any of this. emotions that would be small for an adult are huge for a child bc they are new to them
i really love this interpretation. i remember as a child i always used to feel so lonely when i had big feelings and couldn't explain why i felt the way i did. i think this poem really captures the feeling of realizing that you aren't the only person to experience such emotions, and that it's okay to feel those things
The Light in the Attic poem made me cry. I'm crying again thinking about it. I'm reading it as someone seeing the true internality of another person, the "light". Maybe this person appears distant or opaque in their actions, words, expressions -- but the speaker sees them and their life anyway. I'm a terribly lonely person and I am always afraid that those I love don't see me, CAN'T see me, maybe. This simple, matter-of-fact statement that someone can is making me emotional. Thank you for sharing it and teaching me about Shel Silverstein in general.
Same. I grew up feeling like a weirdo, and as an adult I have always craved friendship and love while also not trusting anyone. This poem made me think about the people who DO see me (few as they are), and I’m grateful.
As a lonely person the one that gets me the most is the little boy and the old man. The mutual understanding of how hard it is to be misunderstood and out of place hits me really really deeply
I did not realize what kind of impact Silverstein had on me until I became a substitute teacher and found a copy of The Giving Tree. I opened it up and read it while the kids were occupied and I couldn't help but be moved to tears, it was like some primal and ancient lock inside my head opened and all these emotions flushed out and I remembered reading it as a child and it made an impact on me that I don't think I fully realized until I re-read it.
I remember A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends from elementary school in the 80's. I was a dyslexic kid with ADHD who struggled in school but these poems stuck in my head. I could picture his poetry so vividly, it made me want to write. I've been writing ever since.
I remember these books only by their covers. I never opened one. I just knew that the existed. This watch almost had me in tears a few times, because I know growing up reading some of these would have at least in some way helped me through parts of my life. I'll definitely be finding a copy of each in the near future, since my wife and I will soon be trying to have children; and I think these will be great for them.
My favorite was The Castle: It’s the fabulous castle of Now. You can walk in and wander about, But it’s so very thin, Once you are, then you’ve been-- And soon as you’re in, you’re out. This really made me question the nature of reality as a kid, from life and consciousness as some overarching narrative to a series of moments to be enjoyed. Truly profound work
I've been a fan of Shel's since I was a kid so over 40 years. He's the main reason I began to write poetry when I was just seven years old. Thank you for this video as it inspired me to write an homage to Shel. Out Past Where the Sidewalk Ends by Zidders Roofurry I still live out past where the sidewalk ends, past all its lines and twists and many bends. Out here I live with all my wonderful friends, out past where the sidewalk ends. Out past the red bricks and those big smokestacks. I don't plan on ever, ever coming back. If you ask me why I'm here I'll say, "It depends. What's there beyond where your sidewalk ends?" I'll invite you to see where the flowers grow, to smell the peppermint winds, and to live life measured and slow. You don't need to be young to come to know life out past where the sidewalk ends.
The special thing about Silverstein, at least in my mind, is that he didn't forget how to think the way a kid thinks. Silverstein's poems stand out above the rest because they meet kids where they are and connect with them as they are. For example, you could argue that "Moon Catchin' Net" is encouraging to kids because it instructs them to have ambition and follow their dreams, but I think you'd be missing the point if you did. Kid's don't need to be encouraged to build a Moon Catchin' Net. They'll do that all on their own. For them, I think, it's just nice to see another person, like Silverstein, that can think the same way about it as they do. I don't doubt that kids will understand Silverstein's jokes, because it's clear to me that Silverstein understands the kinds of jokes that kids make. In that same vain, "Kidnapped" doesn't bother me at all, because I used to know kids who would make up excuses like that all the time, right down to the absurd specificity, because they thought it was funny. I work with fourth graders as part of my current job, and sometimes they surprise me with how morbid they are. It doesn't bother me, though, because you can tell by their attitude that they're doing it to be cheeky and to have fun. They know violence is bad, and that's why they like to joke about it. I think that's a good thing. And besides, my own childhood nickname was "Violent Vincent" because of the kinds of jokes and stories I would dream up. The truth is, though, I tended to be very sensitive about violence in the real world, even then. Maybe that's why I liked to joke about it. Anyway, Silverstein is so successful because he knows how to think the way kids already tend to think, and kids should be allowed to explore dark themes in a safe environment because it helps them develop healthy relationships with challenging ideas. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I think you've articulated this incredibly well. And perhaps the smarter of the powers that be consider such literature a threat partly because of the power it has to nurture and empower kids who aren't part of the ruling class.
Nobody kills me now that I'm older. If you're young and you feel like your parents aren't there enough for you...try and take a second to appreciate the little things they do. Because one they won't be there to do them anymore
I really appreciate how you, like Shel Silverstein, didnt underestimate your viewers intelligence. You pointed out things I may not have noticed but you didn’t explain it to me like I’m dumb, instead you still left these beautiful poems up to interpretation
For anyone interested in what he was doing with Playboy, he wrote comics for them in the 60s where he would visit different places all around the world, and then recount some of his experiences. I've seen a lot of people sharing the one where he visits Fire Island, which is my favorite. Fire Island is known to be an LGBT vacation spot and it's so cool to see what it was like at that time, and it's refreshing to see Shel's take on his vacation there. Sure it's a product of its time, as everything is, but the comics and his narration are so charming. There's a picture of him staring at a drag queen and she's so stunning, making eyes at him in her bedazzled bikini, and it's all just soooo good. You can tell the people he talked to on Fire Island liked having him around, not just because he was a cartoonist for Playboy but also because he was good to them and understood that as a straight man he was a guest in their world. I think that's the best part about Shel's work, that he was clearly no stranger to opening his mind to so many different ideas, and that he pushed the reader to do the same.
Yeah, I have the actual magazines from 1968 where he did some humor pieces on the HIPPIES in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco...Not too bad actually. Back then, Playboy Magazine was actually considered "porn" for intellectual masturbators....Long before "Wokeness" and Political Correctness basically RUINED not only Playboy, but humor and politics itself. But NOW I have my OWN intellectual issues with Playboy Magazine that has nothing to do with "Wokeness" or the "Exploitation/Subjugation" of women, or how "creepy" or "rotten" a man like Hugh Hefner may have been.....But yeah, I really was "The Type Of Man Who READ Playboy", and not just "read" it for the pictures/Centerfolds....I took the magazine pretty seriously until it dawned on me that I personally would NEVER be invited to "party at the Mansion"**.😒🥺😭🙄🙄🙄🙄 ** By then I started "reading" Penthouse, then Hustler, then a whole bunch of others until "articles" and "features" were not even a part of "paper-n-print" magazines....Just PICTURES and a whole bunch of PHONE SEX "900" numbers🙄🙄🤣🤣
@@JebidiahKrackedyetagain-xv9hc My grandfather kept one of those 1968 issues in his nightstand. One of my formative memories is stealing it on a visit to his house (I was maybe 11?) and spending a lot more time reading Silverstein's article than looking at naked ladies.
This was the first video I watched from your channel and it has made me interested in watching many more. Really thoughtful, respectful, intelligent analysis and great delivery and presentation. It’s interesting that even though I definitely recognize “A light in the attic” as this ubiquitous book that was in all children’s libraries during my youth, I never actually read it. Something about the cover intimidated me. it was unusual to see a book without colored pictures.
I remember a teacher assigning us the What if poem but we were supposed to change all the what ifs to good things that could happen so when our what ifs started at night, we would have something to combat them!
Aw, that's lovely! Reminds me of a tactic a therapist told me for catastrophizing; when I find myself thinking about the absolute worst outcome of a scenario (say, this job application is so bad that i'm going to get blocked from this industry entirely), to try and think instead of a ridiculously good outcome of the scenario (say, the ceo is going to be so moved by my application that I will immediately be promoted to co-ceo). It's a good way to break out of the doom with a bit of humor and help point our that your catastrophizing was also unrealistic and dramatic
That's what I was thinking during the reading in the video. I'm reminded of a quote that goes something like "if you aren't willing to acknowledge every good all the time, why are you for the bad?"
I think for the poem "kidnapped," i feel like the kid tells on himself that the reason they were late is definitely made up. He says they blind folded him and plugged his ears but he still gave vivid details on how far they drove, and somehow knew what the kidnappers were doing when he was in the basement. Its like when a kid who tries to make up a good excuse on something over explains and just ends up not working.
When I lived in South Korea in the very early 00s I was gifted a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. I didn't understand a lot of it but I loved the pictures and the art. I loved the non-sensical little phrases. Turns out the reason I couldn't relate to it was because I was autistic... The funniest part to me as an adult now, is that I DO relate to a lot of Silverstein's work. I do understand it. I really appreciate that I was given this book. Thank you for reminding people of these poems.
I have the opposite reaction! Reading these in the video and remembering some of my favorite of his works (Early Bird is genuinely one of my favorite poems), I'm surprised at just how well Shel wrote with an understanding of the neurodivergent mind - whether the energetic hyperactivity of ADHD with a bent toward the absurd, or the autistic literalism and understanding of introversion and masking, or the deep analysis of anxiety, etc. I don't claim to be able to diagnose somebody based on their writing, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that either Shel or somebody very close to him was neurodivergent.
Great analysis. I think I have a slightly different read on the camel poem than it being about censorship. While I think that is absolutely a valid reading I think that is possibly only part of my reading. I think its important that the people putting a brazier on a camel are doing this because they've viewed something natural as indecent. I think this could generally just be about controlling what people should wear and what parts of the body are considered indecent. Awesome that a poem intended for kids can be deep enough for us to have different readings. Not to mention somehow deeper than all the insta-poetry that is prevalent these days. Silverstein definitely started my enjoyment of poetry all those years ago.
The Kidnapped poem reminds me of my best friend's cousin when I was younger. She was CONSTANTLY in trouble and she would try to get out of it by telling very elaborate lies about why she had to do things that got her in trouble. One time she told a story that was pretty ridiculous about why she attempted to forge her mother's signature for a school trip and I remember her mother letting her go on for a minute or two, until she abruptly stopped her and told her to go to her room. The moment she was out of earshot her mother started cracking up about the ludicrous nonsense story her daughter came up with on the fly.
This was a Journey home for me. Thank you for bringing me back to a time when the light in my attic first began to shine. That opening of the mind that is so profound and not understood. “Rock n role band” and “backwards bill” showed me that a kid in the sand can dream a world upside down. SS was a man who walked on the heavens and wondered at the mystery of the ground. I keep his ghost in my guitar, you know. Locked behind the strings. Sometimes he’s mad and makes quite a racket. Other times he’s gentle and rocks me to sleep. Sometimes he wails till my frustration is all out. Sometimes he’s frozen, Quiet as a mouse. Yet the instrument still vibrates, whether I want it to be. Whatever mood he’s in, he reminds me I’m me. My words would come together in such a way without that man behind the strings. Peace be with us all.
After not revisiting these books for at least a decade, I remember these poems intimately and how they had a big impact on me but I didn't know why. Of course I laughed at all the funny pictures and shrieked at the scary ones, but now I finally understand why this felt so profound as a child. I can't wait to go to my parents bookshelf when I come back from college and think more deeply about some of this mastermind's amazing work.
Heres my interpretation of the poems you highlighted: 'My guitar' feels like its about someone wanting to create art (or do something in general), but feeling they aren't capable of doing it themselves, potentially leading into a vague sense of self hatred. Something akin to "the things I want to do would be better if I wasn't the one who needed to do them" but this is probably moreso projection than actual intent lol. 'Monsters I've met' almost feels like a fable, like, "you can't judge what type of person someone is based on how they interact with you" or "even evil people aren't always doing evil." It reminds me of how a lot of people struggle to understand that there aren't *exclusively* negative interactions in abusive households. Even an abusive parent might bring you out for ice cream once in a while 'A light in the attic' feels like its just about the complex inner worlds of reserved people. I do like how it isn't asking them to *leave,* instead just acknowledging "hey, I see you." Or maybe its just supposed to be about the fact other people have lives as complex as you do. Anyway, I wasn't ever good at actually interpreting poetry-- teachers in school thought I was good at it, but I was actually just good at predicting how they would interpret it lol
I think with the guitar poem, the ellipsis makes the ending seem melancholy, or the narrator realizing that while it might seem nice to bypass the struggle needed to create art, if they were to do that, they wouldn't be creating art at all, and having a "sentient guitar" (that is, an easy solution to their creative problems) isn't what they actually want, because then they wouldn't have a purpose as an artist.
@@sophiatalksmusic3588 I don't even think My Guitar is limited to artistic endeavor. It's the expression of the all too often recurring (at least for me) intrusive, paradoxical thought that my life would be so much better if it didn't have me in it screwing everything up.
I got it a bunch. A Light in the Attic, too. Having lost my own 22 month old.daughter in 2014, it really hit home when he talked about Shel's daughter and wife passing away. I don't know how he kept going. Actually I do. I've been doing it for 9 years, 7 months and 20 days. Not sure how I made it this long tbh.
Oh my god. He passed away right around the time I graduated high school. May 10, 1999 😢😢😢 I graduated maybe 2 weeks later. Was already out of class for the year.
My favorite was Sick. I cannot go to school today said little Peggy Ann McKay. I have the measles and the mumps. I think I even see chickenpox.... What? What's that? What's that you say? Today is Saturday? G'bye! I'm going out to play!
I've been struggling with writer's block for a couple months now and hearing you read "Put Something In" made me tear up. It's been a long time since I've read any of these poems but they made a deep mark on my childhood. Personally, the poem about the girl that wouldn't take out the trash still haunts my subconscious lol. This was a very nice video, you did a good job!! :D I'll definitely be back!!
Silverstein was extremely impactful on my childhood... My first venture into his works, as is for most kids, was "The Giving Tree". 2 years had passed, and I found his "A Light in the Attic" in my 5th Grade teacher's classroom. Recognizing the art and the name, I picked it up and would read it every free moment we had for the entire year. At the end of the year my teacher said she had a gift for me. When I went to her desk to see what it was, it turned out to be the copy of "A Light in the Attic" that she had in her classroom. She signed it saying "Keep on reading - and enjoy!". I still have my copy of the book, and I still look through it from time to time.
Shel SIlverstien got me into reading as a child. It was in the third grade that I first read the poem, "Sick." from his book Where the Sidewalk Ends and after reading that poem I was hooked. Such a major influence on my early childhood. I'm shocked to find out he was considered controversial by some, but when I heard how, it made me like him all the more. Rest in peace, Shel.
I don’t remember when I first read Shel Silverstein’s poetry but when I had children, Where The Sidewalk Ends was one of the first books I bought for them. We would read and giggle before bedtime and more often than not, it was me who wanted to read “just one more page.” We checked the other books from the library over and over again. There was a cd of Shel reading the poems aloud that we listened to often in the car. My younger child found your video and sent it to me. She is nearly 20 and we still remember our favorites and giggle over them. Thank you so much for the video. I never thought the poems were disturbing or scary. I found them to be creative and thought provoking. When reading these to my kids, we discussed several of them-what did you think, that was weird, what do you think it was about, and so on. Most of the time we just giggled.
i always loved flipping through Shel Silverstein books and reading the poems and looking at the goofy pictures. as a kid i don’t think i ever caught the depth that some of these hold. the nobody poem got me a little emotional, and the way you read the poem with all the “what if” was pretty profound. i almost want to go back and study other literature and poems from my childhood and see new meaning i can gain from it. the three poems you look at in the “depth” section are interesting to think about. perhaps the monsters one is about strangers and bad people in our lives that use us. the guitar poem makes me think about the difficulty of playing instruments or learning talents in general. it seems like such a cool thing and good idea, something that could bring joy, but it’s difficult to learn and keep up with, and maybe the person is discouraged to keep trying. excellent video! :)
Though it may not have been what Shel Silverstein was imagining, the "Kidnapped" poem reminds me of the fact that in elementary school, a lot of children have difficult at-home lives and because of their age, they don't realize entirely what is wrong in their home and may use it as an excuse for being late for school -- similar to how you hear stories of children casually mentioning the private lives of their parents, or repeating a dangerous story that happened without realizing it was dangerous to begin with.
They had all Shel Silverstein's books in the library at school and I remember that I'd check one out and really really take my time with each poem. Reading it and reading it again. It was the first time I ever enjoyed reading (I have now been diagnosed with ADHD, big shock.) I still love poetry to this day.
It makes sense people feared his work. It also makes absolute sense that so many people recognized it as important and outstanding. What is most striking about his work is how multi-level it is. As a kid, I fell in love with the pictures and the idea of a kid refusing to take out the trash being the subject of a poem. It was all very lyrical and fun to hear read out loud. With age, we see more depth and the rebelliousness of the work. The teaching of character and independence at its heart, the poems are lasting and classic. The work was subversive, in the best way possible. I was born in the '70s and Silverstein was revered in my home. I think that says a lot about my upbringing. As an aside, calling him out for 'gypsy' is a bit absurd as it was not understood as a slur at the time, and I don't really see it as such even today. It's not the preferred term, fine, we adapt and move on. It wasn't used in malice though, and I think that is important. EDIT: I would now soften my words here. I have not seen the poems in a very long time and would now need to reevaluate them. It is not just about the use of a word (which I think is not problematic), but the *portrayal* of a people. That sounds obvious, but I did not understand the context in which the word was used. I now have my homework. Thanks to @hi-i-am-atan and @abandonedaccounnt who mentioned this in a constructive way and added to the discussion without being harsh. It's nice when there can actually be a mature discussion on YT..... 🤗
I'm fine with moving on away from the word gypsy - but I agree growing up I never understood it as something malevolent. In the 80s and 90s words like gypsy, eskimo, and Indian (referring to Native Americans) were nothing but neutral descriptors to us. Incorrect, sure - ignorant too - but that's just what the language was. Growing up, the world got a lot smaller, and a lot more correct because of it.
would you say it'd be absurd to criticize blackface done out of ignorance as well after all, it's not just the use of the word; the poem itself is blatantly evoking the stereotypical imagery that has been leveraged offensively towards the romani people. and, impressively, it does so with the efficiency of a whole two words, with the rest nonetheless reinforcing the imagery and making it absolutely unambiguous that, yes, that is what he's referencing
@@hi-i-am-atan Well, I would avoid your analogy for various reasons, but I see your point. My concern is when we criticize works from the past through the lens of today. It's easy to misrepresent people's intentions, etc. Really, I haven't seen the poems mentioned for a very long time and would need to revisit them (if it was shown in the video, I didn't see it as I was only listening). I do think it is important to consider these things and I am not trying to diminish the harm it could cause people today. Old Loony Tunes are a perfect example as there is some truly racist/bigoted stuff in there, but should we delete those from history? There is a big discussion required and I am not necessarily of any one position. I do think that black face, as you mentioned, and the imagery of the cartoons is a bit different to referencing 'gypsies' in a poem. The most obvious difference is that one was homegrown, the other in a different land. Growing up, I did not think it was a mean term, or that it actually described a people. It described a 'type' of person. Like you could choose to be a gypsy, and we frequently dressed as 'gypsies' for costumes. I don't think we had any negative connotation. They read fortunes and lived free. There was something about stealing children, but I think it was more in line with the 'bogeyman' to scare children into being good. Of course there are problems with that. Overall, though, i don't think it was meant to degrade a people. These were just people of stories, of legend, and they did not actually exist in our world. In Europe, it is a completely different thing. Silverstein, however, was not a child. Was he simply speaking to children in the voice of a child? I don't know. I really had no idea about these poems. This is a topic that seems to be cropping up continuously though. Another example, I rewatched The Venture Brothers cartoon last year. It was made in the early 2000s, but constantly used 'retarded' as an adjective and an insult. It really stuck out. I don't remember noticing it back then, but I would have already been sensitive to it. It's obviously not acceptable. Should we throw away the episodes? I don't think so. Will they stand out as a product of a time or from a creator of a certain age? Yes, I think so. It's an interesting discussion. I agree that we need to revisit these mentioned poems, but we need to do so with perspective and an open mind. Thanks for commenting on it.
I grew up homeschooled in a conservative Christian family. While we didn't have any of Silverstein's books that I remember, there were a few children's poetry books and other children's books we had that featured some of his poems, and they were pretty universally enjoyed by me and my family, and his poem "Pie Problem" became part of our family culture. I don't know if my parents knew about his more controversial work; I certainly didn't until now.
Man I didn't think I would remember any of these, but as you showed each one in succession, I found myself recognizing certain lines and illustrations that went on to revive very old and blurry memories. I think I remember doing an assignment on A Light in the Attic as a kid, and although I don't recall what my interpretation and feelings on the poem were then, now I interpret it as extremely sweet. To me, it's about feeling inferior to others, and an encouragement against that feeling. I think it can have multiple subjects, maybe a kid feels inferior because they don't feel as smart as others (the similarity of having "lights on" as a sign of cognizance draws me towards this) but it could also be someone who struggles to socialize, or otherwise is ostracized from others. Like a dark house that signifies nothing is going on inside, discouraging one from walking up and ringing its doorbell, the kid may seem or feel stupid, or shy and unapproachable. However, Silverstein is saying that he knows there's a light inside there, that he can see past the walls of the house and to the soul of the kid isolated within them. And that the spirit within is bright, and smart, and worthy, and looking back at the world wishing it could be a part of it. It's just a nice reassuring message to anyone who might feel isolated for any reason, there is good in you, even if yourself or others don't see it.
Just yesterday I was thinking about this video and wishing I could remember the name of your channel. I'm currently rereading Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn which has captivated me since I was a kid. I'm not sure if it's up your alley, but I was a disappointed at the lack of content concerning the story and thought about how much I loved your approach with this video. I figure it's a pretty long shot, but it would be foolish not to ask especially after this video just popped up in my feed again. You've got a certain flavor of talent that helps me to get lost in the best parts of my brain, and I'm sure I don't just speak for myself. Experiencing your take on such a layered story would be a wonderful treat. But either way, I still enjoy your work and I'll make sure to turn the notifications on this time.
I loved these books when I was a kid, and I'm sure I read all of them as much as I could. I was an avid reader then and couldn't get enough. I grew up in the 80s, and my mom was one of those moms. The funny thing is that I'm finding out right now that her actions weren't based on her own observations; she was part of a movement. She wanted those books taken away from me for good, and I never knew why. In fact, that's the most involved I remember her being in anything I read. She didn't care about any of my most favorite stories. But of course. Of course someone else had to tell her that I was in danger, and she had to take control without a second thought. I think she was unsuccessful in her quest, and ironically, I just drifted back into my fantasy world of dissociation where I could be safe and happy while mom went off to fight some war that I didn't understand. Over time I read less and less, and now I struggle to get through any article without reading the same sentences over and over and over. I don't read books at all. I was raised southern evangelical in Texas, and my family is part of MAGA. I became an atheist and cut off my family completely. I might as well be a tree stump. 🤓
As an elementary school teacher I had my own well-loved copies of A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends taken by students. I don’t mind at all especially considering many of my students come from homes where reading isn’t always prioritized. I think it’s important for kids to have those special books to read over and over again. I hope they are still being read to this day. I guarantee Ms. Evans is happy knowing that her book has brought you joy for so many years. Books should always spread joy
i had never read silversteins work before, as i live in a non-english speaking country, and was more into prose than poetry as a child, but these poems were so evocative that if i do have children of my own i would like to teach them english to read these to them. (granted, there might be translations out there, but it's hard to say if they would have the same feeling as the originals. perhaps i could read them both for the sake of comparison, if that day comes in a decade or so)
It's tempting to read A Light in the Attic as a metaphor for consciousness - the body is the house, and the light is the soul - you can see it from outside, through the eyes. But the line, "Though the house is dark and shuttered" calls this interpretation into question. If the house is the body, is this person dead? But then, there wouldn't be a light on in the attic either. Are they in poor health? A coma? It feels like I'm reading too deep, but... you never know. Since the book with its title was dedicated to his daughter, it could be completely literal - he saw a flickering light in the attic of some destitute home, and hoped, somehow, that it was his daughter looking back at him. The one poem I can't come up with an explanation for is Monsters I've Met. I must be missing something. Obviously, the theme of appearances/fears being misleading in regards to the truth is present. But those last two lines... what do they mean? Thinking about it from a child's perspective, perhaps he thinks the "right time" to meet these monsters would be when they're doing what's expected of them - stealing souls, drinking blood, etc. So by saying he's meeting them at the "wrong time," it's like saying he's meeting them outside of work, so it _feels_ wrong. Maybe the goal with the poem is to teach the reader that people aren't one-dimensional. Like seeing a teacher outside of school, a child might be afraid that she'll scold him or give him more homework - but of course she won't, she's her own person with a life outside of work. The child is expecting a monster (person) to act like their job, but since it's the "wrong time," they behave differently than expected?
Not sure why your channel came up in my feed, but man am I glad it did. Thank you for this video and all of your others, which I’m off to binge now. At the very least you gained one happy new subscriber today. As for Silverstein, we read his work in school and I was a huge fan. I didn’t remember the darkness, I remembered the silly wordplay the most. But having gone back to his work as an older adult, I am struck by the loneliness in his work. Maybe it’s colored so much by The Giving Tree, but his work feels so melancholy and often downright sad, in usually a beautiful way. We need more Shel Silverstein’s in our world, and fewer of the types of people who try to ban his (or anyone else’s) art from being seen or read by our children.
“nobody” was one of my favorite poems as a kid. i had all of silverstein’s books and that one just really struck me. i’d read it over and over - yet i had forgotten about it until now!! thank you for reminding me.
I can still remember being in 1st grade, and getting to go back into my kindergarten classroom to read The Giving Tree aloud to the new group of students in there. I loved that book, still do, and felt like I was sharing such a treasure when I got to read it then. It always tugged at my heart, but I can't read it at all now without bawling. And I sometimes wonder how it will feel to read it when I'm 90 years old- if I make it that far
The kidnapping poem is about the innocents of childhood lying. The narrative is synthesized right out of a Hollywood movie and told by a child to a teacher. The worst thing in the child's mind is the immediate issue of being late for school. But the absolute over-kill of an excuse and the silver-screen narrative gives that away.
I feel like a lot of people forget that growing up in the 80s and 90s, there was a huge "stranger danger" movement. Just, constant bombardment with "don't take candy from strangers" or "don't get in someone's van who you don't know" from every media soapbox. I always saw the Kidnapped story as a kid who's been late a lot and has gotten caught in a lie by not being able to provide details to obvious follow up questions, so they're figuring out their story ahead of time to answer all the questions. "ok, so what's definitely not my fault? If I got kidnapped. But who did it? Three guys offering candy, like I get told about all the time, and I'll even say that I said no so that I can say I did what the adults told me to do. So, really, it's like it's their fault, right? Ok, but how did they do it? They stuffed me in a limousine. Ok, but why didn't I get out? They tied my hands with wire. Ok, but where did they take me? I don't know because they made it so I couldn't see or hear." And the ultimate punch line was that they didn't answer the final question: ok, so you got kidnapped and were tied up in an unfamiliar location 20 minutes away by car. How did you get to school? That said, all of the other interpretations I've seen could be equally valid, and it's fascinating to hear how everyone else's different experiences shape how they read the poetry.
Thank you for this video! When I was a kid, maybe about third or fourth grade, I couldn't get enough of Silverstein. I had ADHD and anxiety but was undiagnosed at the time, and I didn't have a ton of friends. I was worried about coming across as "annoying" or "too much" a lot of the time, so I spent a lot of time reading. I remember getting my work done as soon as possible so I could sit there and read Shel Silverstein poems for the rest of the class period; my teacher had a few collections, and I would read them over and over again. I think I even memorized a few. I loved the linguistic jokes, the macabre humor, the way they would make me want to laugh or cry at times. Some of them scared me (especially a few in "Don't Bump the Glump"), but I couldn't stop reading them. After getting my degree in English and watching this video, I can't help but have a new appreciation for Silverstein's work. The poem about the thumb made me laugh as a kid; I thought the imagery of a thumb with a weird little face was funny. But looking back, I think I liked that poem in part because I related to it. Like the speaker in the poem, I was also nervous about people thinking I was weird, or laughing at me. The "thumb" felt a lot like my own issues with social anxiety, but because it was presented in a silly, surreal way, I enjoyed the poem. It makes me want to go back and read his work again, to see how I view it now as an adult with a greater understanding and appreciation of both myself and the English language.
I remembered many of these poems from reading his books as a child, but I had forgotten “The Little Boy and the Old Man” which seems to me from an adult’s perspective incredibly profound, and hit me the hardest out of any of the poems you highlighted. Great video, thank you for sharing.
Silverstein was a fun and easy way to get me to read. As a dyslexic, I would avoid reading whenever possible; however, his books helped me to practice, practice, and practice. Now at 46, I still read slowly, but I have learned to find joy in books. When my daughter was younger and I was deployed, she fell behind her class in reading. The first thing I thought of was Shel Silverstein, I ordered her his books and had her read them to me on our phone calls. Now as an adult in her 20s, she is never without a book in her bag. Some of his poems may be controversial, but that is what makes them fun! For me, someone learning the joy of reading is more important than trying to shield our kids.
i don't think i ever realized that _A Light in the Attic_ was his main claim to fame. because for me as a kid it was always _Where the Sidewalk Ends._ my sister and i had that one on audiobook, performed (spoken, sung, and shouted) by Shel Silverstein himself. those performances are all ingrained in my psyche as deep as anything i had the interesting experience of re-listening to the poem "Enter this deserted house" as an adult, and man do i have a new appreciation for it. i choose to interpret it as an allegory (if that's the right term here) for the Earth. he describes this deserted house as being home to increasingly wild beings, before capping it off with the revelation that "I dwell here, and so do you." and that just speaks to me so much about how the world is not _ours._ rather, we're just another entry in the endless list of organisms that call this place home. and if we find that frightening or foreboding, good. that's exactly what it is
It's funny, because that one is straightforward enough to be disturbing, but when I was a kid we would play stuff like kidnapping in about that amount of detail. It wouldn't have bothered me one but.
Yeah, that poem is definitely all stuff within the wheelhouse of kids. Kids are morbid because they don't understand the weight of their dark humor and play. To a kid, being shot and dying is the same as being hit with a dodge ball and being out of the game
I have a memory of one of my friends reading that poem aloud, and when he got to the end the rest of us laughed and went "Oooh!!" and "You just told the biggest lie EVER!" in that "you're going to be in such big trouble" voice kids use. If any of us thought it was disturbing, I didn't pick up on it.
I always read it kinda staccato and out of breath , adding detail after detail to make sure the lateness is overlooked , I imagine the kid telling it looking up from under furrowed brow , peeking to gauge if the teacher is buying it yet. 😂great stuff .
My favorite Shel Silverstein poem that’s always deeply resonated with me since I was a child is called Headache. Having a tree growing up out of me Is often a worrisome thing. I’m twisty and thorny and branchy and bare But wait till you see me in Spring.
This was an EXCELLENT video! I loved the way you carefully went through some of his most fascinating poetry. Something you didn't mention about the Big G and little a poem: while I'm not a religious person, and don't often look for/read into religious interpretations, but I always felt that Silverstein was imagining this poem as "Big G God" talking to "little a adam." The fact that it's G and a didn't feel arbitrary to me, and it's worth thinking about, I think!
Where the sidewalk ends is the one I have read over and over. I had the cassette of him reading a lot of them, sometimes playing guitar as accompaniment. The other books are great too, but I think that one came back into popularity in the early 80s as that’s when I began reading it. I remember being glad I was allergic to peanuts so I couldn’t suffer the fate of the king in Peanut Butter Sandwich
i love your channel, yes for the insightful analysis and obvious care that you show when you talk about something you very clearly love, but also because sometimes its just really nice to have someone gently read you a poem :)
I LOVED these books as a kid. I must have read Where the Sidewalk Ends at least a hundred times over, because I could never find A Light in the Attic (and hmm... I wonder why) And although "Masks" isn't in any of these three books, it's easily favorite poem of his. Despite its simplicity it's always remained deeply relevant to me. Increasingly so, in fact. It goes like this: She had blue skin, And so did he. He kept it hid And so did she. They searched for blue Their whole life through, Then passed right by-- And never knew. Of course the meaning is pretty clear, but for whatever reason it struck a particularly resonant chord for me. I just so highly value authenticity/honesty, but still consistently find myself caving to the pressure to alter my behavior for others, when all I truly care about is the most honest level of communication possible. To pass by someone who may truly understand you is so clearly a fate worse than potential ridicule, the phrasing of the poem hammers it home in an utterly undeniable way. It's a constant reminder for me to remain as real as possible 😎 (Also I memorized the entirety of the Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout poem to impress people)
I used to LOVE Shel Silversteen books as a kid. Your video has reminded me how much I still love them. I guess I know what I'll be rereading when I get home from work today. What really struck me as I was listening to your video is how much of an impression these poems left on me, even now that I can't remember their specifics. He really helped me form a few of my fundamental views on the world, and the weird creepy vibes aleays made me feel a bit more at home, if that makes sense? I felt like the world was weird and creepy place, and he was just acknowledging it with words. It was comforting.
This is a rare occasion that a RUclips video has genuinely made me cry. These books have so many memories tied to them for me of my early childhood. I have them on my shelf to this day and I’m almost 20.
It was really beautiful watching you go through these poems I read as a child, and despite how long ago it was, still remembering every single one of them.
I absolutely loved Shel Silverstein as a kid and read all his poetry collections. I just ordered them all for my daughter who is an avid reader- can’t wait to share these with her.
What If is one of the best explanations of what Generalized Anxiety Disorder feels like from the person with GAD. Because I have GAD and this poem hits way to close to home.
I’m feeding the algorithm as it’s the best I can do to offer support right now. The odd thing about growing up with a writer for a parent, a guy fresh out of grad school who unexpectedly found himself raising a little girl alone, is that I missed out on Shel Silverstein as a kid….I read what I could reach on Dad’s bookshelves: Roethke, Hopkins, Yeats, Wallace Stevens…a kid-version of Memorizing Mo. Thank you for sharing these, I finally see why he is such a deservedly beloved poet. (I still have a scar on my cheek from a tumble taken trying to climb my way to the upper shelves of that bookcase. Proud to have it.)
My favourite Silverstein work is Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back. It’s more prose than poetry, and has a quiet, thoughtful message that resonates with me even until today. I’d encourage anyone in this comment section to check it out.
I am 52 and I’ve always loved Shel Silverstein’s poetry. As a child, I thought it was hilarious, especially the illustrations. Some were even a little naughty 😂. I guess that’s why some parents didn’t like them. As an adult, some of his poems still make me laugh out loud, but now some make me cry too. You’ve inspired me to start sharing Silverstein’s amazing work with my students!
I've only just come across your channel and I've never been into poetry, though I didn't mind it in school. I'd never heard of Silverstein either, but I'm thinking about buying a copy of one his books now. There's something so wonderful about art that can communicate complex feelings and emotions to kids and adults (I'm a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes for a similar-ish reason), and though I don't know what it would be like for a kid to read these, I found them very cathartic. Particularly whatif, something so normal for us all to experience, that has plagued me almost every night since I was a kid. I don't know for sure, but I imagine a young me would have found that very comforting. It's a shame some parents would want to try and prevent children from exploring and understanding negative emotions in such a healthy way. Thank you for such a thoughtful video, and I'll be honest I only wrote this comment to give myself some time to reflect on it, which I think says a lot about the quality in this world of fast-media doomscrolling and binge-watching.
I think there's a hint of Silverstein missing "Nobody" in the Nobody poem which I thought was very relateable. Lonliness can be terrible but also comforting and addicting.
When I was a kid, I took "Put Something In" very literally and wrote (in ballpoint pen) my own poem on that page of the book. I wasn't even old enough to know how to spell properly. Now I'm mad that I ruined my copy of one of my favorite books, but I can't help but think that Shel Silverstein would approve of it.
Speaking as an artist myself (an illustrator, not a poet, but I think itd close enough for this context) Silverstein would definitely like it. The fact you were so moved by his work that you immediately wanted to create your own is one of the biggest compliments you could give to a creative. I can't remember who, but theres an artist out there who said his favorite response a fan has ever given to recieving one of his autographed drawings was a small child who was so excited that they literally ate the paper. Swallowed it whole. 😂
Thanks for this trip down memory lane! If I could issue a small correction: the push to ban books is often not coming from parents directly, but from extremists who hide behind "parents' rights" as a wedge to push their hateful agendas. They will often prop up a handful of parents from the local community to make themselves more legitimate, but if you look at the rank and file of these organizations you'll find that it isn't a group for parents at all. That's not to say that people without children can't be part of the discussion on education, just that we should be careful and not take the extremists' framing of the situation at face value.
Smut books and porn have no place in school. You intentionally misnomer these movements as extremist because it is easier to discredit a valid argument when you do that. Surely you've seen some of those "books" being read at school board meetings by parents, who are then told they aren't allowed and it is inappropriate, and their mics cut off. Parents don't want their children to be groomed. These aren't books like 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird, or A Light in The Attic. The books that parent's don't want in the hands of little children are literal pornography.
Thank you for doing this video. I've loved the works of Shel Silverstein since I was a child. The first story I fell in love with is The Giving Tree then fell in love with Where the Sidewalk Ends. His poetry and stories always brought me hope and laughter. His poetic descriptions are stellar. Thanks again.
Hey everyone. Hope you enjoyed the video and I'd love to hear if you have any additional thoughts on Silverstein. The bonus Patreon video will be coming out soon. I had some technical difficulties while filming and realized a little too late. But I think I've pinpointed the issue and should be able to take another crack at it as soon as I have the time. Until then, there will be a little deleted joke from the last video. Anyhow, thank you all, as always, for your continued support!
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If you want to see the ACTUAL most problematic thing Silverstein wrote, it wasn't a kid's poem. Look up "Father of a Boy Named Sue", which he spun off from his popular song "Boy Named Sue" made famous by Johnny Cash.
It's so over the top cruel and intentionally disgusting I found it hard to believe it came from the same man who'd written so many of my favorite childhood poems. Silverstein had done grim, bawdy, and gory before, so it's not like he'd been completely soft-edged until this, but this poem just feels so openly meanspirited. It retroactively made me enjoy the original less, and I almost wish I'd never heard of it.
Quoting Pincus was an immediate dislike. Dude is an absolute buffoon.
He’s quite an interesting artist and he is worthy of immense analysis. More Silverstein videos please; his relationship with absurdism and cynicism is decades ahead of his “peers”
Nice job with this video and your reflections on Silverstein :)
When I was in kindergarten I was unfortunately the victim of a kidnapping that left me utterly traumatized for a long time. What really gets me is that I remember reading Shel Silverstein's books not a year later when I was in 1st grade. Many of the poems in this video were familiar to me, but not "Kidnapped." I assume our teacher skipped that one for obvious reasons... If only I had gotten to read that poem back then, I think it would have resonated with me and comforted me, just to see my experience written down like that. The kidnapping occurred in the middle of the school year and I vividly remember returning to school for the first time in months with an entirely changed outlook on life and newly self-deprecating inner dialogue. I remember nervously lying to my teacher, saying I had instead been "visiting somebody." But another thing I remember, is that I felt totally isolated and unique compared to my peers who couldn't even comprehend what I had gone through (and to be clear, my experience was nothing like the kidnapping described in the poem, but still!). Honestly, this is just another reason I'm vehemently anti-censorship. Silencing these kinds of works because they feature violent language does not inherently "protect" the children reading it. There are kids out there like me who *need* to know that they're not alone. They need to find works of art that express them through words they can't yet find themselves. They're being told their experiences should be silenced, locked in a box with the key thrown away. Maybe this is a little too personal and serious for a RUclips comment, maybe. That's just my 2 cents; let's be like Silverstein and treat our youth with the respect they deserve.
2024, it is real.
So true, we can't censor things like this because there is someone who needs to hear it. Thank you for sharing your story 💗
I was never kidnapped, but I sure could have benefited from reading some of his poems like whatif and the skin suit one (to know that others out there feel like they're just putting on an act, because I was undiagnosed autistic and ADHD and trying to fit in) because knowing I wasn't alone in my experiences would have helped me accept myself and maybe open up about it to others (a big maybe, I didn't even tell my best friend since I was 4 when my dad was in the hospital for brain cancer which he survived when I was in grade 2)
@@Alex-fc8xn I am glad your dad survived. I lost my mom to cancer more than a year ago. Not a moment goes by when I don't miss her.
Let me guess, you were kidnapped by your biological father. Either that or you made up a cringe story for the internet. Either way, lame.
people who thought kidnapped was too dark or graphic for kids has probably never heard children talk to each other
Or the Stranger Danger assemblies we had in school in the 90’s. They’d tell us all manner of horrifying stuff about kidnapping.
idk, I mean, it's impossible to have not heard children talk to each other, because we were all children once!!! At best it's a serious case of amnesia, and likely, a lot less innocent or well-meaning than that.
kidnapped was my favorite poem as a kid. idk why.
@@squirlmy”Loss of innocence” is actually EXACTLY what I was thinking (but you worded it better lol). I can see 10 year old me reading it and not being creeped out but finding it a silly over-explanation of why I was late. Particularly also as children we can be bad liars so we tend to add as much detail as possible thinking it would sound more believable
They think high schoolers are sensitive to sexual content LOLOL
"When the light turns green, you go.
When the light turns red, you stop.
But what do you do when the light turns blue
With orange and lavender spots?"
That one always stuck with me. I remember feeling that the poem was about embracing the unexpected.
Sounds like being autistic to me. You try to learn the rules and signals, and then are suddenly confronted with something completely baffling. Bonus points when everyone else knows exactly what it means. I've not expressed that well, but it's the sort of question I find myself dealing with quite often.
I also memorized this one
I love it. To me, it's about how we try and make it seem like the world is so simple and weall made, but can surprise you at anuy time. Just like you said, having to deal with the unexpected.
I had no idea shel Silverstein was controversial. My mom was a very conservative parent and didn’t let me do much, but she had a copy of his poems and had us learn them in school. I remember them fondly.
My parents are very liberal and we loved his poems.
Same with very conservative parents. I wasn't allowed to watch the scenes in Snow White with the witch, but I was allowed to read the poem about a kid getting kidnapped and held at gunpoint.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69did you even read the comment bro??????
@@cozmoee What are you confused about?
@@cozmoee he was just adding onto my sentiment and the sentiment of the commenter before him. I also don’t see what’s wrong.
“Skin Stealer” always reminded me of how it felt to have meltdowns and anxiety attacks. I had both from a very young age, and I usually lashed out pretty badly when they happened. It felt like I was someone else. That wasn’t me, it was all of the everything stealing my skin and being horrible. I’m a good person, I don’t yell or hit people or break things. Years after I forgot about that poem, it still feels the exact same as it did when I was 8 and couldn’t figure out why I was so mad.
My youngest sister has anxiety and oppositional defiance disorder.
My Violet is one of the most kind and gentle people that I know. But she had a really hard time as a kid. None of the teachers followed the IEP plan to help her through transitions, or providing her a space to be alone and decompress. When Violet talked back and got angry with anyone, she literally couldn't help it. She would be apologizing in between bursts of anger, and then came the guilt and shame spiral, which was so sad. She is an adult now and she seems to be taking really good care of herself.
Anyways, I'm not trying to diagnose you or imply anything, but your comment made me think about how much I used to worry about her, and recognizing the anger, the guilt and regret, and the sadness that she carried on her shoulders.
I hope that you have been able to learn some things about yourself since then, so that you know the best way to take care of yourself. I hope that didn't come off as condescending or anything, I am just trying to convey that I hope things have gotten better for you since that confusing time in your life as a child. 🖤🖤
While clearly not about this in the context of kids, the poem could be directly applied to the behavior of an alcoholic.
this was sort of how i initially interpreted the poem, rather than it being a kid trying to get out of trouble. it read to me as someone genuinely feeling like they cant control their behavior, whatever the reason may be.
Makes me think of manic depression.
@@OtakuUnitedStudiocame here to say the same exact thing. Sometimes I feel so ashamed of how I acted after a bad manic episode. I don’t shift the blame but the feeling of shame makes me so embarrassed
my interpretation of as a child of the “kidnapped” poem was that schools are so strict when it comes to tardiness or absences that the child needed to make up such an insane vivid story to get away with being late. When I was younger, I was frequently late to school for reasons that were almost completely outside of my control, and I would always get in trouble. I sometimes felt that the only explanation that the school would accept that wouldn’t cost me would be an outright emergency like the one in the poem
Why do we pretend that kids WOULDN'T come up with something this crazy when they're trying to come up for an excuse for something when the consequences are high? It's not like kids understand the levity of saying "I got kidnapped" in the real world, or even all of the extreme things mentioned in the poem (which, let's be real, we'd all seen on TV at some point). It's just a story! I say this as one of those kids who also came up with some wild stuff that got me sent to the school counselor. I didn't grasp the implications, I was just trying to get out of trouble, hah
My dad brought me to school when I was in elementary school, and I was regularly punished for being late as a little little kid, as if it was my fault my dad didn't start getting ready to take me in until after school had started. I didn't realize how, uh, kinda bad that was until very recently. I mean, it made sense to me as a kid, if something bad happens you get punished; it had nothing to do with whether it was your fault. I guess that's honestly a better representation of the real world, but not a great way to get a kid thinking about the consequences of their (or someone else's) actions lol.
@@jerssh just another example of schools trying to make people placid towards injustice :( don't question why you're in trouble, just accept it. it sucks
@@jerssh thats literally submissive conditioning
I was always a fan of Someone Put a Brassiere on the Camel
I think it is hugely beneficial for children to be introduced to negative emotions and concepts like anxiety, especially in a safe environment like poetry. These kids are inevitably going to experience anxiety and sadness so if you can teach them that it's okay it happens to everyone and how to deal with it going forward, they're going to have a much better grasp on these concepts than a child who was never educated on feelings because their parents thought it would be harmful.
Agreed. It’s so isolating when nobody tells you about these things because you develop this mindset where you don’t want to reach out because you think you’re the only one going through it. When you know you’re not alone, you feel validated & you look to others like you for guidance. It’s a net positive.
I disagree entirly. It should be done in anything but poetry. IF you've got something to say, it should be said so it can be unambiguously understood. Not buried under layer after layer of metaphor and similie using archaic rhymic patterns like some kind of weird hyroglyphs in a pre-rosetta stone world.
@@MeepChangeling Perhaps you're being sarcastic, or trolling. Or perhaps you honestly didn't notice that you used a simile to make an argument against the use of similes. In any case, your meaning is not unambiguously understood.
@@MeepChangeling You're an example of why poetry should be taught more.
@MeepChangeling I love the accidental hypocrisy you just did. What is your opinion on the mass spread of metaphors and similes in music? Stop that too?
I grew up badly bullied, with a dysfunctional family, and a learning delay. I couldn’t read very well for all of elementary school. Silverstein’s work was deeply comforting to me as a kid, and it’s what taught me to read well.
The Giving Tree always resonated really heavily with me as a kid. I think Kidnapped did too, because I remember being awed by it. I hadn’t read anything like it at that age (7ish). There was something so impactful about being taken seriously as a reader vs a lot of the other children’s lit. It’s something special.
The Giving Tree was such a special book for me too. Makin' me tear up thinking about it now. My kindergarten teacher gave us all gifts at the end of the year and she chose that book for me. I really wish I still had that copy but I think it was gifted to another family as I got older so at least it had an impact on another kid's life.
I had a very sad childhood it comforted me too
Halo Combat Evolved taught me to type so much faster than the Mavis Beacon programs, christ almighty.
I loved kidnapped!!
@@autumnmatthew3185 same, I had a relatively safe upbringing and didn't feel any serious worries about being kidnapped, so as a kid I read it as an adult understanding how much kids like me hated school in a wildly exaggerated way.
No one is gonna read this, so I feel okay sharing a memory.
My father, from whom I am now estranged, loved Shel Silverstein. Had all the books, and read them to me frequently when I was small. I have a vivid memory of, when I was perhaps 8 or 9, reading A Light in the Attic while laying on our trampoline. After a while of reading, I went inside to get some water but didn't go back outside till the next day. It turns out it had rained overnight, and the poor book was a soggy mess on the trampoline. I remember being so distraught, just completely a mess; I LOVED that book, so so much, and read it to myself dozens of times, even memorized half the poems. And as a kid, I was terrified of ruining things or messing up because it almost always ended in being yelled at and strongly physically disciplined. But when I told my father what happened, he only told me it was okay, and that we have lots of books and it would be alright. I can't forgive the things he's done, but in that one little memory I think that maybe he understood my complete and utter despair in the loss of one of my favorite books and comforted me. I often speak of him as though he's died, and this little memory is one I keep for those days that I wish I had a dad.
Wow. This comment hit me hard. That last sentence especially, as I do the same thing myself. Hope you’re doing alright friend
I dont know what he did to you or why your estranged so maybe its out of place but its almost always worth it to reconnect with your folks before they die. Good luck in life
Your story is so beautiful and has brought me to tears.
In all these little disparate ways, I feel the vivid life behind your story. I remember some summer long ago when I left a little Transformers choose your own adventure book out in my Uncle's back yard, on a rock near his pool. Much like the mosaic of sun and storm we had just today in Albany where I live, a little squall sent the gathered family in for a while. But I had forgotten the book. That booked had belonged to my brothers before me, and the Transformers stuff that they grew up with seemed like precious antique heirlooms. My dad loves book collecting and taught me to try and take care of books. I remember the feeling of that soggy, mushy book, that devastation, that shame. The heavy air in the grass, the grit of that rock － I love sitting on big rocks － the lush lumps of clover and dandelion that filled the summers around my uncle's pools... were much the same as would grow around the trampolines that my brother's friends were lucky enough to have in their yards. I loved being alone on a trampoline, come evening in the woods, not even bouncing, but just rocking, looking up at the sea of leaves above.
About one year ago, my girlfriend's father passed away. When she and I first met in highschool, like me, she didn't have many people she could really connect to. She had her father though - who she'd see come weekends when she escaped from the clutches of her prison-guard of a mother to go to her grandmother's place. Her dad was her world; everything that excited her - music, art, comedy - she had learned from him, she shared with him. Those early days when we just started talking - when she'd chime in from the corner when I was just talking to myself really - she'd show me stuff like the strange mixes of music and media he'd record, bit by bit let me into her world. And as the more I wandered into the mists of her heart, I felt always the warmth of the light he had sparked in her.
I met him many times, in those years we were together in college, before they became estranged. I was away for a while in Japan when she stopped talking to him, for the longest time wouldn't even fully explain to me what happened. He was an alcoholic, and it got so bad... she just couldn't have a relationship with him anymore. Now he's gone, and we had to clean out all is meager worldly belongings, all the movies and music he loved, all the original art and music he had left behind. He was a beautiful man, that I wish we could still have in our life. For so long though, even before death took him, he was already gone though.
He in his room a Beanie Baby teddy, "#1 Dad" on a little necktie, no doubt given to him some father's day by his only daughter. He kept it there, by his bedside, with a picture of her. He missed her. Yet he wouldn't change. He just couldn't change. Something was just too broken inside him, and I don't know what we could have done about it. I just don't know, and now I will never know.
I understand, if maybe indirectly, exactly what that duality of love and estrangement feels like. One day your father will be gone, and if by then you're still estranged, you may feel regret. But it's so hard to know what we really could have changed.
This passed week, I spilled a giant glass of water all over the wide open pages of a favorite book of mine. I was just goofing around with my girlfriend when I knocked the cup over. It's a beautiful reprint of an old and rare book on the history of the O&W railroad and Sullivan county NY, possible to replace but not cheap. I ruined it. I utterly ruined it. I tried drying it, but the pages that took a soaking just will never be the same. I was angry, stomping, ready to smash things, just so angry at myself.
－ the feeling of the crisp glossy sheen is gone, stains and wrinkles around the edges of those affected pages. Somehow though, I find the book more beautiful now.
Buddy it’s not too late. Go tell him you are sorry and reconnect. You owe it to him and yourself.
@@dongvermine I was 13 when I got kicked out, after years of being stripped of my privacy, forced to do every household chore, and beaten daily. I won’t b apologizing for anything.
Just wow. I always thought of Silverstein as "the poet that I read when I was little with the silly drawings." But I think that "Nobody" poem is the most beautiful and profound collection of words I've ever read.
I think it's directed towards introverts, we're the Nobody we create when we push people away, until we can't go on supporting that lifestyle.
Pairs nicely with "My Guitar"
i interpreted it as saying that no matter how lonely or alone we may feel, if you just take a moment and walk around your home you will be reminded that your family are in your life and love you. I can imagine how nice of a message that is for a child to hear.
Beautiful. Took the words right out my mouth @@klamup
"Whatif" is my favourite Silverstein poem that you brought up. I think it's very encouraging. By contrasting very normal, relatable fears with certain more outlandish ones in each couplet, it's like he's telling kids that all fears, or at least most, are outlandish. You shouldn't be afraid of flunking in school or having crooked teeth, any more than you should fear your head shrinking. At least, you shouldn't let that fear change the way you live your life. And he frames the Whatifs as little creatures that bring intrusive thoughts at night; he's telling you that the thoughts aren't yours, and you can get rid of them if you choose. And while the anxieties they bring are destructive, they're also normal enough to experience that kids should know how to recognize them and learn to shut the Whatifs out.
Same. I have ADHD and PTSD, so I deal with intrusive thoughts constantly. *_Constantly._* I'm 40 and only just now switching careers, cuz I spent the entirety of my youth so terrified of going into the "wrong" career that I froze and wound up not really pursuing any of my interests. I worked, but I never considered it a career. My heart wasn't in it.
I wish I could be anyone but me.
@@WobblesandBeanI have similar struggles. So far, EMDR and buddhism have been my best boons, but sometimes I convince myself I’ll someday be “fixed” or something.
That’s actually incredibly beautiful
Am I silly or were the war and divorce lines strangly abrupt with their lack of rhyme? Almost like those whatifs took a second longer
Sendak was very clear about this as well. Obviously. But also in those fantastic angry interviews.
If you can get your hands on The Comics Journal biography/memorial, he tells an absolutely gutting story I heard him tell at Berkeley, which he said he had never told and had never had any plans to tell.
By telling it, he could relieve the gaslighting of someone on the panel and bring her peace from a lifetime of pain, and that in a weird way it was a shared trauma between people who had never met. Kismet. I'm so glad he got it out late in life, and so glad it was included in the volume.
It's heartbreaking the level of shaming and gaslighting he went through as a kid. Monsters are so real that it's too much for me. i never intended to move to Salem, but boy howdy do I get to confront it.
Loved the video. Your reaction to the poem Kidnapped made me think of something Neil Gaiman has said about his book Coraline and kids' reactions vs parents' reactions to it. Paraphrasing, Gaiman noted that parents would often be much more unsettled by Coraline than their kids would be, and the kids would see an adventure or a fight the protagonist of the story could win where parents would see danger. I did read Kidnapped as a kid and now as an adult the way I think about it is that the visceral language is a product of a kind of imagination without regard for real world severity that kids have. Kids incorporate violence into their imagination and play but they don't have the context for the pain that would go with it and so they don't recoil from it in the same way adults do.
I also think it's relevant that Kidnapped was written in the 80s, when parenting norms were changing in reactions to fears both real and imagined about strangers giving kids drugs, kidnapping, etc. As a kid I found this poem funny and thought the humor came from the kid repeating back the kind of story their parents or teachers would tell them as an excuse to get out of school-- "don't take candy from strangers or you'll get kidnapped!" is not something that is ever or was ever likely to happen, but having it repeated constantly combined with kids generally getting a lot of enjoyment from imagined violence, and it seems a pretty logical thing (to a kid) to whip out as a late for school excuse.
According to Gaiman, his publisher couldn’t determine if Coraline was a book for children or adults, so his editor (I think it was his editor) gave it to her daughter and asked if it scared her. She said no, and the book was deemed safe for kids.
Years later, Gaiman was seated next to that same girl after Coraline (the movie) was made and recounted that same story. The editor’s daughter recalled that she was scared as hell, but she wasn’t going to tell her mother that. If she admitted she was scared, the book would be taken away, and she wouldn’t know how it ends!
Source: one of the essays from The View From the Cheat Seats
I definitely read the poem myself as a child as well - a light in the attic, sidewalk ends, and falling up were all well-loved in my house as a kid - but I can't say it made enough of an impression on me as a child for me to remember it in specific. I agree that it feels like the type of thing that as a kid would just seem funny to me - that a kid would make up such an outlandish, terrible story just to explain being late to school. I can see why it reads as somewhat visceral as an adult but I don't think.. most kids would see it as any different than any other story of danger and adventure
I had a similar impression from Kidnapped! as a kid in the 90s. I remember feeling tense when reading it, then all of that deflated with the punchline and I found it really funny. It reminded me of all the awful news I'd been overhearing and all the over-the-top warnings adults would give me.
I read a lot of silverstien growing up. My favorite is invitation (first poem in one of his collections... where the sidewalk ends??)
I've just begun reading some of hid poems to my daughter, so your video came to me at the perfect time; I've been reviewing each of his poems, trying to match which are right for her at the moment.
She's been reading since she was three, so she's ready for the vocabulary and ideas, but even some Disney movies are too scary for her. It's a delicate line.
I agree with your assessment of kidnapped, and see nothing problematic about it. It reflects children giving any excuse to avoid punitive measures brought forth over performing a mistake.
Which further reflects the inherent problem often found in parenting where punitive measures do not makes kids better people, it just teaches them to lie and make excuses.
No, Kidnapped is quite relevant and a bona fide good children's poem. The only thing problematic about it, is that some use it as an example to invalidate the work as a whole, which is so egregiously preposterous, that nothing more need be said regarding that.
The poem nobody made me feel like he always had somebody that he was taking for granted and only realized it when they were gone
Oooh I never even thought of that that’s interesting
I mean, it was mentioned that he lost his young daughter and regretted not getting to know her better, could be either her or his wife ...
I wonder if when they "stand up and tell you *Nobody*.." is their best friend, if they're addressing or discarding them. I read this as lonely kid, so I read it slightly different, but your interpretation fits like a glove.
I saw it as a plea from the introverts. Sometimes what calms people down is having time to yourself alone to think, to dream, to comfort yourself with your own hobbies. It can be triggering anxiety when you look all over and cant find a quiet place to be alone, the Nobody was so nice to have around
@@DeanCubedThat also works.
"Kidnapped" made me cry when I was a child (and still does). This poem describes my mornings in an abusive household better then I had the words for back then. Its one that made me love his writing because he knew! He KNEW what it was to be that child in an abusive household.
To offer an alternative perspective- I forget when I read "kidnapped" first. I think around 8-10. To me I immediately understood it was a kid lying to excuse their lateness. I never even considered it was controversial until much later. But then again, I was immersed in media like Home Alone, Don Bluth cartoons and was reading some YA books that had kids lying to parents a bunch.
Damn. The poem being an allegory for abuse... that is such an interesting perspective.
I never read Silverstein until now, but as someone who was also from a dysfunctional/abusive home, I immediately interpreted it the same as you did. The shame I felt as a kid, chronically tardy and usually because my family couldn't go a day without some kind of emotional eruption that left everyone feeling rotten.
This is such a different, extreme, and deep way to resonate with that poem. I'm sorry for you struggle, and it definitly gives me that different, flipped perspective on it.
@@myrpok as a chronically late person, I STILL think of excuses this wild 😂 I totally understood it was meant to be a convoluted excuse by a little kid
'Skin Stealer' became my favorite poem as a preschooler. The brilliance of Shel Silverstein includes the fact that I was able to completely understand most of Shel's poems even at that age but the meanings became more profound as I got older. To be able to fully find a piece of writing at two different ages is quite special. I appreciate Shel's writing.
Also, have to say, if your teacher could see how well loved that copy is, she wouldn't mind that you kept it. 😊
In 1983, my elementary school music teacher wrote melodies for several poems of Silverstein. He had even received permission from Silverstein, because we ended up recording them and sendinig it to him (the teacher made this out to a really big deal). I can still remember some of the tunes, especially "There's a polar-y bear, in our fridgedaire, he likes it cuz it's cold in there..."
😊❤
A band called The Irish Rovers once wrote a melody to his delightful unicorn poem. Some radio stations still play it on St. Patrick's Day, for reasons I don't fully understand.
With his feet in the meat and his face in the fish and his big hairy paws in the buttering dish.
Boy, core memory unlocked there.
Oh my god I remember the polar bear one! My mom loved reading that one to me haha
@@lazmanonearth Because it's a good song performed by a good band and a lot of people really enjoy it. The Irish Rovers were kind of the only band that did traditional Irish music that became kind of mainstream in the US, and that was one of their most popular songs, even if that song in particular wasn't a traditional Irish song. Back in the day lots of their music would be played on St. Patrick's Day, as they were the most popular source for that music, so of course they'd play their most popular songs, as time went on the song became associated with the holiday in the US.
Shel Silverstein always reminds me of my older sister because she loved his books as a child. I remember her reading them and chuckling to herself. They made her feel smart like she was in on the joke, and I think they fostered her rebellious spirit along with her love of words and language. She wrote a lot of clever poems herself that were clearly influenced by his.
I found his books a bit unsettling as a child, maybe because I found the drawings crude and creepy. But in middle school, I did a project on Shel Silverstein and learned about his life and art, and that gave me a new-found respect for him as a creative voice. I adore his simple and approachable style. His work can be so profound with so few words. You selected some great ones to read for this video. Makes me want to go back and reread his collections!
My sister and I used to read this book together all the time. We're adults now, and she cut all contact with the family a long time ago. She and I both have a strained relationship with our parents, but I don't know why she cut out me and all our cousins as well.
I miss her a lot. I miss my niece and nephew. Wherever they are, I just hope they're happy.
Yeah. I was like your sister. ❤️
As a preschool teacher, I’m always excited to introduce silverstein to new kids every year. He really taps into something that they understand, and even I still enjoy his poems!
He was a guest at a school I was going to in the 1st grade. I had his books signed by him until they got lost due to the many evictions we had. Meeting him was the only highlight that year. My stepfather started getting far more violent when he got drunk, he also started drinking more. I think he could see that I wasn't having a happy childhood as he seemed to tell me a few stories that I kept to myself mostly. It was things that I felt was very personal. Just remember that no child asks to be born. But remember that parents ask to be taken care of. That was the last thing he said to me. I've carried that with me and have taught that to my children. It was more than likely just telling me that one day I'll be a parent and I have the power to change things for the better. I morphed it to mean never ask of your children more than you have given then many times over. He was an inspiration. I've told you that I've never told anyone else the origin of with the exception of my wife. She also knows what all he told me. I'll tell my kids what all he told me when my daughter reaches her dream of being an author. Both of my kids will learn the origin of kids don't ask to be born when one of them has a kid. I think they'll get a kick out of it, but more than likely won't be surprised.
@@DogDooWinner - thank you for sharing your experience and the profundity of it. Surrounding the topics covered later in this video - I think it is a helpful contribution and aid to new parents that hope to break vicious, sad cycles.
Your story gives me hope too that things may yet be different - for the better - because of a learned experience.
Parenthood borne of selfless love is such a needed, challenged thing in this world. Thank you.
I met Shel when I was 20 and working at PLAYBOY in the production dept. under John Mastro. Shel was friendly and approachable, but at the time, I didn’t know who or what he had to do with the magazine. Times were different then. Even though my job required me to be behind the scenes, I had to have my picture taken (for potentiality…).
Now, I am the matriarch of a family with 5 grown children and 17 grandchildren. My children enjoyed all of Shell’s books, and now those grandchildren old enough to read and understand the poems, also enjoy him. The family is a successful one, blessed with intelligence and humor as well as one motivated by Christian outreach. My kids suffered from the “what if’s”, loved the garbage poem involving Sarah Elizabeth Stout, and they now read those same poems to the next generation who will make a difference. WHO KNEW? Thanks, Shel.❤❤
k lol
@rosemarynewton1195 “(for potentiality…) wow, does that mean what I think it means?
@@FelixBaker420 it means Playboy is run by misogynistic sleazebags, like most porn stuff
My dad would read silverstein to me at bedtime. We would laugh, we would sing the unicorn song, we would just enjoy the meter and the rhymes.
And this morning...laying in the same bed he read those poems to me almost 30 years later. I'm brought to years by your analysis and by the depth of what was a bedtime book for me.
I've always loved silvertseins work. And now I think I'll have to read through them again. And I know I'll be reading them to my kids before bed when that day comes.
Thank you.
My grandpa loved Shel Silverstein's books, and gifted the full set of his books to me as a child. I remember he'd mark his favorite poems for me to read. It was like a fun scavenger hunt. I always loved finding his little notes and inscriptions, learning who he was through his favorite poems.
I'll never forget flipping through the pages and finding his note saying this was his absolute favorite poem, "The Little Boy And The Old Man". I understood it immediately as a kid, and now, as an adult, it hurts me in so many ways that I couldn't have imagined back then. I love it so so much
I've always been moved by Shel Silverstein's poetry, especially now - but listening to the poem about the Gooloo bird, I burst into tears.
I'm a family social worker, and I spend every day trying and failing to help parents with tiny children overcome barrier after barrier to finding stability. I watch my families lose their jobs and their homes, scramble after cuts to their benefits, panic in the face of new pregnancies, or best-case scenario get priced out of my service area entirely.
My wife and I moved out of my beloved home town because it has some of the highest rent in the country. We've never lived in an apartment longer than two years, and that's been a rarity. Every year we talk about having children, and every year we decide we just can't do it until our lives are more stable. We'll rent most of our lives if we're lucky and all of them if we're not. We're the most financially secure among everyone we know, and owning a home is a pipe dream.
Can't put down roots. Can't even stop to rest. We're a generation of Gooloo birds.
Your story, stories rather, are profoundly... touching, saddening, sobering.
For your sake and all the ones you clearly care for so deeply I hope & pray better times will come, they must!
The work you do is so important, thank you for what you do.
Move away though, why don't you move away? Land is dirt cheap if you get off the coasts.
@@CovenoftheOpenMindplease stop telling them to do this 😭. I’m in the middle of nowhere Tennessee, land here USED to be cheap, until everyone started seemingly mass-migrating from mostly FL and CA about 10 years ago. Now our mountains are getting deforested and pasture lands bulldozed, all so that they can get turned into the lookalike suburbs these people moved from. Looking through land records is devastating, places that sold for 100k 5 or 10 years ago are now 400k+. Everyone I know that grew up here, who’s families have lived here for generations, will only be able to afford homes and land if they are fortunate enough to inherit.
@@CovenoftheOpenMind this is a perfect demonstration of how privilege fails to *attempt* to understand, in favor of making the reality simpler and easier to digest
@@CovenoftheOpenMindyou forgot about the job part of the equation there. land is cheap because there’s no one with money to pay for it in the first place. remote work has unfortunately been the death of this. i say unfortunately because now wealthy white collar workers are driving up the price of land in these areas without contributing at all to the local economy or bringing in new jobs, leaving the former working class inhabitants who barely survived in the first place left with quite literally nowhere to go. they become a servant class since all jobs available to them rely on serving the wealthy in their area, i.e. babysitting or fast food.
A Light in the Attic... to me, it's myself locked in my head. Inescapable. But the light is on, I'm still alive in there. Just hiding because I'm afraid. The thing that gets me is the viewpoint is third-person. Someone else is looking in and seeing the light on. That means someone else can see the real person hiding in there and is telling them that. I think that's far more profound than if it were just about the person musing about being in their own head.
"hello in there" john prine
Yeah, the first thing that came to mind for me was someone in a coma, but that's not really an every-day situation unless you live in a soap opera. The more I think about it, it could be seen as the (awkward?) silence that falls between people. You both are thinking your own thoughts, but for whatever reason you keep them to yourselves. It's like a thoughtful acknowledgement of the other person's existence.
Shel Silverstein’s poetry made me feel _SEEN_ as a child! My fears, tears, hopes and wildest dreams were on those pages. He helped me understand myself 🙏🏾 Thank You, Mr Silverstein 🥰 Your memory is a blessing 🕯
The first gift I was given at the hospital when I was born was a copy of Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends. I still have my copy, and it’s survived three floods and many, many move-houses. Shel inspired me to write my own poetry, to create my own wacky drawings and nonsensical stories. I own all of his children’s poetry books, and I remember saving up months of allowances as a child so I could buy my very own hardcover copy of A Light In The Attic. I have a very deep appreciation for Shel’s poetry and even his songwriting; A Boy Named Sue was a song my dad and I used to listen to in the car on road trips when I was really little, maybe seven or eight. I have some of his poems memorized, but one of my favorites was always Boa Constrictor. My grandmother used to bring me to the park as a child and we’d recite it together while she pushed me on the swings. Many fond childhood memories stem from Shel’s works, and I think reading his poetry at a young age is the reason I’m such a thinker today. Shel Silverstein assisted in raising several generations of children and encouraging them to make, to put pen to paper and just create. Even though he died before I was born, I am so thankful for the compilations of poems he created for young audiences.
Great analysis. I loved Silverstein when I was a kid, and it's great to come back to it now. I feel like a lot of this could be brought into conversation with Calvin and Hobbes. There's so much in that comic that fits well with the playfully-mischievous tone of Silverstein.
Calvin making up dramatic stories of his teacher as "a Zorgon about to make him into a stew!" seems right in line with the kidnapping poem. And Calvin blowing up his school with T-rexes in fighter jets seems right in line with a story about Abigail wasting away because her parents won't buy her a pony.
At the end of the day, when Calvin accidentally causes his dad's car to roll into the ditch, he's broken up about it, and tells his parents, and they forgive him. And at the end of the day, Silverstein's poems are likewise full of "sentiment, depth, and profundity" as you put it.
All in all, it seems like Bill Watterson and Silverstein share the attitude that kids can grapple with philosophy just fine (and are doing it all the time). And that they've got enough of a "moral law" in them that they can see something "dramatically naughty" and laugh about it without being influenced toward evil.
Very well said! I absolutely loved Calvin and Hobbes and I attribute my advanced vocabulary as a kid to Bill Watterson, haha. If you haven't watched Renegade Cut's recent video on Bill Watterson, I highly recommend it.
@@RoughestDrafts Oh man I love it too. I read and re-read those as a kid.
I don't think I've seen Renegade Cut's video about it! I'll check it out!
Just got to the Kidnapped! part of the video and my first thought was also Calvin. Seems like a kid with an overactive dramatic imagination
I adore Calvin and Hobbes, and I appreciate what you say. However, I see a big difference between the work of Watterson and Silverstein, possibly because of coming across them both as an adult. It seems to me that Watterson incorporates both the child's and the adult's point of view. To Calvin, Hobbes is a person, a sometimes scary, sometimes annoying, sometimes fun, friend, who never lets him down, and is ultimately in his control (unlike a real friend). To Calvin's parents, and to the adult reader, Hobbes is also a stuffed toy, brought to life by Calvin's vivid imagination. We see Hobbes both ways, in the drawings. The double view reflects the fact that both children and adults can see through each others' eyes, at least some of the time. Adults remember (more or less) being children, and children (more or less) know the difference between real and pretend. The stories speak to me, as an adult, and also to the child still in me. There's a level of wit and nostalgia and reference that you have to be an adult to get.
Silverstein, whose writings and drawings I know only from this video, does not really seem to me to be talking to adults at all, unlike most writers for children, who have a sense of answerability to the adults who are the ones actually buying their books. For that reason, his work, while not as sophisticated as Watterson's, seems more edgy and challenging, for both good and bad - he doesn't pull any punches. The "only kidding" couplet at the end of "Kidnapped", for example, seems almost deliberately weak and perfunctory compared to the concrete, detailed imaginary kidnap, which is truly the stuff of nightmares. I can well believe that many, or even most, children could take this in their stride, but it's genuinely unsettling to read as an adult, and the artwork only reinforces this impression. I can see the depth in some of his poems, and some are mind-stretching fun. I would not want to ban him, but I might hesitate to give one of these books to a child.
Having said that, my own childhood reading was often wildly unsuitable, including awful, but compelling, Victorian moral tales full of dead children getting their reward, or punishment, in the afterlife (nun-approved, at school!) and things I was much too young for, and it didn't do me much harm. At least, I don't think it did!
My copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends was given to me by my 12th grade high-school math teacher Mr. Daley. I saw it on his desk one day I told him that as I kid I used to always check Silverstein's books from the library cause we couldn't afford to buy me a copy. A 20 dollar book was an unnecessary waste on a single mother salary. He read his favorite poem out loud, "The Little Blue Engine" and signed the first page. "Congratulations on graduating, may your dreams in life come true." That was 14 years ago and I couldn't be happier with my life. Thank you Scott.
Regarding "Kidnapped", I remember reading it as a kid and it reminded me a lot in tone of the book Sideways Stories from Wayside School, as well as a lot of Roald Dahl books, which were written in the same era. I think it was just considered to be more acceptable to include dark and macabre material in children's books at the time, especially for comedic effect.
Yeah, the illustrations in Shel's books are very on par with those in Dahl's books, and I loved both as a kid.
as a kid I always just interpreted as some long-winded fib that a kid would make up for being tardy to class
@@fartgarfunkeljr It literally is a long-winded fib in the context of the poem. But as someone who listened to a true crime podcast once or twice, pretty grim. Not saying publishers should censor it, just grim to think about actual incidents where people have been kidnapped and shoved into vans.
Yeah, and to mention that it was detailed, well that's an imaginative kid who's likely watched too many 70's cheesy action movies. I remember the type when I was a kid. You always had those types who could wind out a fib, and make it serious enough for adults to worry.
Yeah, people grew up to be sensitive
hearing that “what if” poem made me tear up i don’t think i’ve ever seen someone describe those late night anxious thoughts so perfectly
One of my favorites for this reason
So, as an adult, the punchline to Kidnapped really caught me off-guard and is the only one of the ones you read that made me laugh out loud. The humor is dark but I think it lands. It's such an absurdly dark story to tell in order to try and get out of trouble for such a minor thing. I guess I take it as someone making up an excuse for being late and don't really read too deeply into it other than that. As someone who watched a lot of TV and movies as a kid, being able to imagine a scenario like that seems entirely plausible for a modern child.
As a kid who hated school, that poem wasn’t shocking in the slightest to me and made complete sense. I was never one of the ones brave enough to lie out of a school day but I envied the ones that were and thought that sometimes doing whatever it takes just for one day off was perfectly reasonable
yeah, I was an imaginative kid, and its not like parents were really careful about what media we were consuming. I recall a fair few memories of violent TV when I was really young. So I always assumed it was a detailed whooper that the kid was spinning in order to get out of trouble for being late. I think I laughed when I read it as a kid.
my interpretation of Nobody was that you are more loved than you realize. the narrator wakes up to realize he is loved and he finds someone who loves him in each cranny and nook and each place he looked. it is telling you that regardless of circumstance you will find goodness if you look, even if its hidden. i feel like this is speaking to the unique kind of loneliness you get as a child, you feel much more alone because you are new to the world and it is all so big and scary and adults dont really understand what youre feeling, and you dont know how to communicate any of this. emotions that would be small for an adult are huge for a child bc they are new to them
I had a very similar experience as a child
That was my favorite poem by him. I longed to be able to recite it and have it be my actual reality.
i really love this interpretation. i remember as a child i always used to feel so lonely when i had big feelings and couldn't explain why i felt the way i did. i think this poem really captures the feeling of realizing that you aren't the only person to experience such emotions, and that it's okay to feel those things
This is how I interpreted as a kid! I saw it as even though you’re alone, you aren’t really alone
@@ingetamna childhood is a very existential time!! lmao
The Light in the Attic poem made me cry. I'm crying again thinking about it. I'm reading it as someone seeing the true internality of another person, the "light". Maybe this person appears distant or opaque in their actions, words, expressions -- but the speaker sees them and their life anyway.
I'm a terribly lonely person and I am always afraid that those I love don't see me, CAN'T see me, maybe. This simple, matter-of-fact statement that someone can is making me emotional. Thank you for sharing it and teaching me about Shel Silverstein in general.
love without expectations and you'll always be loved
No feeling is final, I hope all the best for you, Sunsnake.
Same. I grew up feeling like a weirdo, and as an adult I have always craved friendship and love while also not trusting anyone. This poem made me think about the people who DO see me (few as they are), and I’m grateful.
As long as you're concerned for how others see you, you will always be lonely.
As a lonely person the one that gets me the most is the little boy and the old man. The mutual understanding of how hard it is to be misunderstood and out of place hits me really really deeply
I did not realize what kind of impact Silverstein had on me until I became a substitute teacher and found a copy of The Giving Tree. I opened it up and read it while the kids were occupied and I couldn't help but be moved to tears, it was like some primal and ancient lock inside my head opened and all these emotions flushed out and I remembered reading it as a child and it made an impact on me that I don't think I fully realized until I re-read it.
Giving tree is amazing
One of my favorite books. I've purchased and given away at least half a dozen copies.
It was my late father’s favorite book
I remember A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends from elementary school in the 80's. I was a dyslexic kid with ADHD who struggled in school but these poems stuck in my head. I could picture his poetry so vividly, it made me want to write. I've been writing ever since.
I remember these books only by their covers. I never opened one. I just knew that the existed.
This watch almost had me in tears a few times, because I know growing up reading some of these would have at least in some way helped me through parts of my life. I'll definitely be finding a copy of each in the near future, since my wife and I will soon be trying to have children; and I think these will be great for them.
My favorite was The Castle:
It’s the fabulous castle of Now.
You can walk in and wander about,
But it’s so very thin,
Once you are, then you’ve been--
And soon as you’re in, you’re out.
This really made me question the nature of reality as a kid, from life and consciousness as some overarching narrative to a series of moments to be enjoyed. Truly profound work
I've been a fan of Shel's since I was a kid so over 40 years. He's the main reason I began to write poetry when I was just seven years old. Thank you for this video as it inspired me to write an homage to Shel.
Out Past Where the Sidewalk Ends
by Zidders Roofurry
I still live out past where the sidewalk ends,
past all its lines and twists and many bends.
Out here I live with all my wonderful friends,
out past where the sidewalk ends.
Out past the red bricks and those big smokestacks.
I don't plan on ever, ever coming back.
If you ask me why I'm here I'll say, "It depends.
What's there beyond where your sidewalk ends?"
I'll invite you to see where the flowers grow,
to smell the peppermint winds, and to live life measured and slow.
You don't need to be young to come to know
life out past where the sidewalk ends.
This is a really good poem!
@@ja.y9574 Thank you!
Beautiful
The special thing about Silverstein, at least in my mind, is that he didn't forget how to think the way a kid thinks.
Silverstein's poems stand out above the rest because they meet kids where they are and connect with them as they are. For example, you could argue that "Moon Catchin' Net" is encouraging to kids because it instructs them to have ambition and follow their dreams, but I think you'd be missing the point if you did. Kid's don't need to be encouraged to build a Moon Catchin' Net. They'll do that all on their own. For them, I think, it's just nice to see another person, like Silverstein, that can think the same way about it as they do. I don't doubt that kids will understand Silverstein's jokes, because it's clear to me that Silverstein understands the kinds of jokes that kids make.
In that same vain, "Kidnapped" doesn't bother me at all, because I used to know kids who would make up excuses like that all the time, right down to the absurd specificity, because they thought it was funny. I work with fourth graders as part of my current job, and sometimes they surprise me with how morbid they are. It doesn't bother me, though, because you can tell by their attitude that they're doing it to be cheeky and to have fun. They know violence is bad, and that's why they like to joke about it. I think that's a good thing. And besides, my own childhood nickname was "Violent Vincent" because of the kinds of jokes and stories I would dream up. The truth is, though, I tended to be very sensitive about violence in the real world, even then. Maybe that's why I liked to joke about it.
Anyway, Silverstein is so successful because he knows how to think the way kids already tend to think, and kids should be allowed to explore dark themes in a safe environment because it helps them develop healthy relationships with challenging ideas. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Joking about violence? Uhhh...
And that's what they allow' as teachers. No wonder' more are being arrested in the news, for every type of debauchery.@@Heyu7her3
Yes there can be jokes about violence. lmao... @@Heyu7her3
I think you've articulated this incredibly well. And perhaps the smarter of the powers that be consider such literature a threat partly because of the power it has to nurture and empower kids who aren't part of the ruling class.
Nobody kills me now that I'm older.
If you're young and you feel like your parents aren't there enough for you...try and take a second to appreciate the little things they do. Because one they won't be there to do them anymore
except a lot of those parents aren’t actually there for their kids. My parents were disinterested at best and downright abusive at worst
I really appreciate how you, like Shel Silverstein, didnt underestimate your viewers intelligence. You pointed out things I may not have noticed but you didn’t explain it to me like I’m dumb, instead you still left these beautiful poems up to interpretation
For anyone interested in what he was doing with Playboy, he wrote comics for them in the 60s where he would visit different places all around the world, and then recount some of his experiences. I've seen a lot of people sharing the one where he visits Fire Island, which is my favorite. Fire Island is known to be an LGBT vacation spot and it's so cool to see what it was like at that time, and it's refreshing to see Shel's take on his vacation there. Sure it's a product of its time, as everything is, but the comics and his narration are so charming. There's a picture of him staring at a drag queen and she's so stunning, making eyes at him in her bedazzled bikini, and it's all just soooo good. You can tell the people he talked to on Fire Island liked having him around, not just because he was a cartoonist for Playboy but also because he was good to them and understood that as a straight man he was a guest in their world. I think that's the best part about Shel's work, that he was clearly no stranger to opening his mind to so many different ideas, and that he pushed the reader to do the same.
Yeah, I have the actual magazines from 1968 where he did some humor pieces on the HIPPIES in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco...Not too bad actually. Back then, Playboy Magazine was actually considered "porn" for intellectual masturbators....Long before "Wokeness" and Political Correctness basically RUINED not only Playboy, but humor and politics itself.
But NOW I have my OWN intellectual issues with Playboy Magazine that has nothing to do with "Wokeness" or the "Exploitation/Subjugation" of women, or how "creepy" or "rotten" a man like Hugh Hefner may have been.....But yeah, I really was "The Type Of Man Who READ Playboy", and not just "read" it for the pictures/Centerfolds....I took the magazine pretty seriously until it dawned on me that I personally would NEVER be invited to "party at the Mansion"**.😒🥺😭🙄🙄🙄🙄
** By then I started "reading" Penthouse, then Hustler, then a whole bunch of others until "articles" and "features" were not even a part of "paper-n-print" magazines....Just PICTURES and a whole bunch of PHONE SEX "900" numbers🙄🙄🤣🤣
Sounds degenerate. Everyone was right to try to ban his garbage.
Oh god, not another wokepocalypse theorizer.@@JebidiahKrackedyetagain-xv9hc
@@JebidiahKrackedyetagain-xv9hc My grandfather kept one of those 1968 issues in his nightstand. One of my formative memories is stealing it on a visit to his house (I was maybe 11?) and spending a lot more time reading Silverstein's article than looking at naked ladies.
This was the first video I watched from your channel and it has made me interested in watching many more. Really thoughtful, respectful, intelligent analysis and great delivery and presentation.
It’s interesting that even though I definitely recognize “A light in the attic” as this ubiquitous book that was in all children’s libraries during my youth, I never actually read it. Something about the cover intimidated me. it was unusual to see a book without colored pictures.
Welcome JJ 🙏 this guy's videos are incredible
hey JJ!
MFin' JJMcCullough on a rando video about Shel Silverstein. What an out of place comment.
Sorry, I know you left this comment a while ago, but I just wanted to thank you and let you know that I love your content!
I remember a teacher assigning us the What if poem but we were supposed to change all the what ifs to good things that could happen so when our what ifs started at night, we would have something to combat them!
Aw, that's lovely! Reminds me of a tactic a therapist told me for catastrophizing; when I find myself thinking about the absolute worst outcome of a scenario (say, this job application is so bad that i'm going to get blocked from this industry entirely), to try and think instead of a ridiculously good outcome of the scenario (say, the ceo is going to be so moved by my application that I will immediately be promoted to co-ceo). It's a good way to break out of the doom with a bit of humor and help point our that your catastrophizing was also unrealistic and dramatic
That's what I was thinking during the reading in the video. I'm reminded of a quote that goes something like "if you aren't willing to acknowledge every good all the time, why are you for the bad?"
I love that! I'm going to try that next time the Whatifs start whispering @@amberbydreamsart5467
That's pretty similar to how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) works, sounds like you had a good teacher!
@@Robot3_14 She was Amazing!
I think for the poem "kidnapped," i feel like the kid tells on himself that the reason they were late is definitely made up. He says they blind folded him and plugged his ears but he still gave vivid details on how far they drove, and somehow knew what the kidnappers were doing when he was in the basement. Its like when a kid who tries to make up a good excuse on something over explains and just ends up not working.
When I lived in South Korea in the very early 00s I was gifted a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. I didn't understand a lot of it but I loved the pictures and the art. I loved the non-sensical little phrases. Turns out the reason I couldn't relate to it was because I was autistic... The funniest part to me as an adult now, is that I DO relate to a lot of Silverstein's work. I do understand it. I really appreciate that I was given this book.
Thank you for reminding people of these poems.
I have the opposite reaction! Reading these in the video and remembering some of my favorite of his works (Early Bird is genuinely one of my favorite poems), I'm surprised at just how well Shel wrote with an understanding of the neurodivergent mind - whether the energetic hyperactivity of ADHD with a bent toward the absurd, or the autistic literalism and understanding of introversion and masking, or the deep analysis of anxiety, etc. I don't claim to be able to diagnose somebody based on their writing, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that either Shel or somebody very close to him was neurodivergent.
Great analysis. I think I have a slightly different read on the camel poem than it being about censorship. While I think that is absolutely a valid reading I think that is possibly only part of my reading. I think its important that the people putting a brazier on a camel are doing this because they've viewed something natural as indecent. I think this could generally just be about controlling what people should wear and what parts of the body are considered indecent.
Awesome that a poem intended for kids can be deep enough for us to have different readings. Not to mention somehow deeper than all the insta-poetry that is prevalent these days. Silverstein definitely started my enjoyment of poetry all those years ago.
I read it much the same way!
The Kidnapped poem reminds me of my best friend's cousin when I was younger. She was CONSTANTLY in trouble and she would try to get out of it by telling very elaborate lies about why she had to do things that got her in trouble. One time she told a story that was pretty ridiculous about why she attempted to forge her mother's signature for a school trip and I remember her mother letting her go on for a minute or two, until she abruptly stopped her and told her to go to her room. The moment she was out of earshot her mother started cracking up about the ludicrous nonsense story her daughter came up with on the fly.
Fun fact, Shel wrote a boy named sue. Johnny cash heard him play it, liked it so much he asked if he could record it
This was a Journey home for me. Thank you for bringing me back to a time when the light in my attic first began to shine. That opening of the mind that is so profound and not understood. “Rock n role band” and “backwards bill” showed me that a kid in the sand can dream a world upside down. SS was a man who walked on the heavens and wondered at the mystery of the ground. I keep his ghost in my guitar, you know. Locked behind the strings. Sometimes he’s mad and makes quite a racket. Other times he’s gentle and rocks me to sleep. Sometimes he wails till my frustration is all out. Sometimes he’s frozen, Quiet as a mouse. Yet the instrument still vibrates, whether I want it to be. Whatever mood he’s in, he reminds me I’m me. My words would come together in such a way without that man behind the strings. Peace be with us all.
After not revisiting these books for at least a decade, I remember these poems intimately and how they had a big impact on me but I didn't know why. Of course I laughed at all the funny pictures and shrieked at the scary ones, but now I finally understand why this felt so profound as a child. I can't wait to go to my parents bookshelf when I come back from college and think more deeply about some of this mastermind's amazing work.
Heres my interpretation of the poems you highlighted:
'My guitar' feels like its about someone wanting to create art (or do something in general), but feeling they aren't capable of doing it themselves, potentially leading into a vague sense of self hatred. Something akin to "the things I want to do would be better if I wasn't the one who needed to do them" but this is probably moreso projection than actual intent lol.
'Monsters I've met' almost feels like a fable, like, "you can't judge what type of person someone is based on how they interact with you" or "even evil people aren't always doing evil." It reminds me of how a lot of people struggle to understand that there aren't *exclusively* negative interactions in abusive households. Even an abusive parent might bring you out for ice cream once in a while
'A light in the attic' feels like its just about the complex inner worlds of reserved people. I do like how it isn't asking them to *leave,* instead just acknowledging "hey, I see you." Or maybe its just supposed to be about the fact other people have lives as complex as you do.
Anyway, I wasn't ever good at actually interpreting poetry-- teachers in school thought I was good at it, but I was actually just good at predicting how they would interpret it lol
I think with the guitar poem, the ellipsis makes the ending seem melancholy, or the narrator realizing that while it might seem nice to bypass the struggle needed to create art, if they were to do that, they wouldn't be creating art at all, and having a "sentient guitar" (that is, an easy solution to their creative problems) isn't what they actually want, because then they wouldn't have a purpose as an artist.
@@sophiatalksmusic3588 I don't even think My Guitar is limited to artistic endeavor. It's the expression of the all too often recurring (at least for me) intrusive, paradoxical thought that my life would be so much better if it didn't have me in it screwing everything up.
I want a video thats just you reading the entire book and explaining every poem. Your voice is very calming
"Where the Sidewalk Ends" was the book everyone wanted to check-out at the elementary school library. It was ALWAYS checked-out!
I got it a bunch. A Light in the Attic, too.
Having lost my own 22 month old.daughter in 2014, it really hit home when he talked about Shel's daughter and wife passing away. I don't know how he kept going. Actually I do. I've been doing it for 9 years, 7 months and 20 days. Not sure how I made it this long tbh.
Oh my god. He passed away right around the time I graduated high school. May 10, 1999 😢😢😢 I graduated maybe 2 weeks later. Was already out of class for the year.
My favorite was Sick.
I cannot go to school today said little Peggy Ann McKay. I have the measles and the mumps. I think I even see chickenpox....
What? What's that? What's that you say? Today is Saturday? G'bye! I'm going out to play!
I've been struggling with writer's block for a couple months now and hearing you read "Put Something In" made me tear up. It's been a long time since I've read any of these poems but they made a deep mark on my childhood. Personally, the poem about the girl that wouldn't take out the trash still haunts my subconscious lol. This was a very nice video, you did a good job!! :D I'll definitely be back!!
Silverstein was extremely impactful on my childhood... My first venture into his works, as is for most kids, was "The Giving Tree". 2 years had passed, and I found his "A Light in the Attic" in my 5th Grade teacher's classroom. Recognizing the art and the name, I picked it up and would read it every free moment we had for the entire year. At the end of the year my teacher said she had a gift for me. When I went to her desk to see what it was, it turned out to be the copy of "A Light in the Attic" that she had in her classroom. She signed it saying "Keep on reading - and enjoy!". I still have my copy of the book, and I still look through it from time to time.
Shel SIlverstien got me into reading as a child. It was in the third grade that I first read the poem, "Sick." from his book Where the Sidewalk Ends and after reading that poem I was hooked. Such a major influence on my early childhood. I'm shocked to find out he was considered controversial by some, but when I heard how, it made me like him all the more.
Rest in peace, Shel.
I don’t remember when I first read Shel Silverstein’s poetry but when I had children, Where The Sidewalk Ends was one of the first books I bought for them. We would read and giggle before bedtime and more often than not, it was me who wanted to read “just one more page.” We checked the other books from the library over and over again. There was a cd of Shel reading the poems aloud that we listened to often in the car. My younger child found your video and sent it to me. She is nearly 20 and we still remember our favorites and giggle over them. Thank you so much for the video. I never thought the poems were disturbing or scary. I found them to be creative and thought provoking. When reading these to my kids, we discussed several of them-what did you think, that was weird, what do you think it was about, and so on. Most of the time we just giggled.
i always loved flipping through Shel Silverstein books and reading the poems and looking at the goofy pictures. as a kid i don’t think i ever caught the depth that some of these hold. the nobody poem got me a little emotional, and the way you read the poem with all the “what if” was pretty profound. i almost want to go back and study other literature and poems from my childhood and see new meaning i can gain from it.
the three poems you look at in the “depth” section are interesting to think about. perhaps the monsters one is about strangers and bad people in our lives that use us. the guitar poem makes me think about the difficulty of playing instruments or learning talents in general. it seems like such a cool thing and good idea, something that could bring joy, but it’s difficult to learn and keep up with, and maybe the person is discouraged to keep trying.
excellent video! :)
Though it may not have been what Shel Silverstein was imagining, the "Kidnapped" poem reminds me of the fact that in elementary school, a lot of children have difficult at-home lives and because of their age, they don't realize entirely what is wrong in their home and may use it as an excuse for being late for school -- similar to how you hear stories of children casually mentioning the private lives of their parents, or repeating a dangerous story that happened without realizing it was dangerous to begin with.
They had all Shel Silverstein's books in the library at school and I remember that I'd check one out and really really take my time with each poem. Reading it and reading it again. It was the first time I ever enjoyed reading (I have now been diagnosed with ADHD, big shock.) I still love poetry to this day.
It makes sense people feared his work. It also makes absolute sense that so many people recognized it as important and outstanding. What is most striking about his work is how multi-level it is. As a kid, I fell in love with the pictures and the idea of a kid refusing to take out the trash being the subject of a poem. It was all very lyrical and fun to hear read out loud. With age, we see more depth and the rebelliousness of the work. The teaching of character and independence at its heart, the poems are lasting and classic. The work was subversive, in the best way possible. I was born in the '70s and Silverstein was revered in my home. I think that says a lot about my upbringing.
As an aside, calling him out for 'gypsy' is a bit absurd as it was not understood as a slur at the time, and I don't really see it as such even today. It's not the preferred term, fine, we adapt and move on. It wasn't used in malice though, and I think that is important. EDIT: I would now soften my words here. I have not seen the poems in a very long time and would now need to reevaluate them. It is not just about the use of a word (which I think is not problematic), but the *portrayal* of a people. That sounds obvious, but I did not understand the context in which the word was used. I now have my homework. Thanks to @hi-i-am-atan and @abandonedaccounnt who mentioned this in a constructive way and added to the discussion without being harsh. It's nice when there can actually be a mature discussion on YT..... 🤗
I'm fine with moving on away from the word gypsy - but I agree growing up I never understood it as something malevolent. In the 80s and 90s words like gypsy, eskimo, and Indian (referring to Native Americans) were nothing but neutral descriptors to us. Incorrect, sure - ignorant too - but that's just what the language was.
Growing up, the world got a lot smaller, and a lot more correct because of it.
would you say it'd be absurd to criticize blackface done out of ignorance as well
after all, it's not just the use of the word; the poem itself is blatantly evoking the stereotypical imagery that has been leveraged offensively towards the romani people. and, impressively, it does so with the efficiency of a whole two words, with the rest nonetheless reinforcing the imagery and making it absolutely unambiguous that, yes, that is what he's referencing
you guys should check out one of his other poems - "the gypsies are coming"
@@hi-i-am-atan Well, I would avoid your analogy for various reasons, but I see your point. My concern is when we criticize works from the past through the lens of today. It's easy to misrepresent people's intentions, etc.
Really, I haven't seen the poems mentioned for a very long time and would need to revisit them (if it was shown in the video, I didn't see it as I was only listening).
I do think it is important to consider these things and I am not trying to diminish the harm it could cause people today. Old Loony Tunes are a perfect example as there is some truly racist/bigoted stuff in there, but should we delete those from history? There is a big discussion required and I am not necessarily of any one position.
I do think that black face, as you mentioned, and the imagery of the cartoons is a bit different to referencing 'gypsies' in a poem. The most obvious difference is that one was homegrown, the other in a different land. Growing up, I did not think it was a mean term, or that it actually described a people. It described a 'type' of person. Like you could choose to be a gypsy, and we frequently dressed as 'gypsies' for costumes. I don't think we had any negative connotation. They read fortunes and lived free. There was something about stealing children, but I think it was more in line with the 'bogeyman' to scare children into being good. Of course there are problems with that. Overall, though, i don't think it was meant to degrade a people. These were just people of stories, of legend, and they did not actually exist in our world. In Europe, it is a completely different thing.
Silverstein, however, was not a child. Was he simply speaking to children in the voice of a child? I don't know. I really had no idea about these poems. This is a topic that seems to be cropping up continuously though. Another example, I rewatched The Venture Brothers cartoon last year. It was made in the early 2000s, but constantly used 'retarded' as an adjective and an insult. It really stuck out. I don't remember noticing it back then, but I would have already been sensitive to it. It's obviously not acceptable. Should we throw away the episodes? I don't think so. Will they stand out as a product of a time or from a creator of a certain age? Yes, I think so.
It's an interesting discussion. I agree that we need to revisit these mentioned poems, but we need to do so with perspective and an open mind. Thanks for commenting on it.
@@abandonedaccounnt Thanks for the recommendation. I will have a look at both of the poems.
I grew up homeschooled in a conservative Christian family. While we didn't have any of Silverstein's books that I remember, there were a few children's poetry books and other children's books we had that featured some of his poems, and they were pretty universally enjoyed by me and my family, and his poem "Pie Problem" became part of our family culture. I don't know if my parents knew about his more controversial work; I certainly didn't until now.
Man I didn't think I would remember any of these, but as you showed each one in succession, I found myself recognizing certain lines and illustrations that went on to revive very old and blurry memories.
I think I remember doing an assignment on A Light in the Attic as a kid, and although I don't recall what my interpretation and feelings on the poem were then, now I interpret it as extremely sweet. To me, it's about feeling inferior to others, and an encouragement against that feeling. I think it can have multiple subjects, maybe a kid feels inferior because they don't feel as smart as others (the similarity of having "lights on" as a sign of cognizance draws me towards this) but it could also be someone who struggles to socialize, or otherwise is ostracized from others.
Like a dark house that signifies nothing is going on inside, discouraging one from walking up and ringing its doorbell, the kid may seem or feel stupid, or shy and unapproachable. However, Silverstein is saying that he knows there's a light inside there, that he can see past the walls of the house and to the soul of the kid isolated within them. And that the spirit within is bright, and smart, and worthy, and looking back at the world wishing it could be a part of it. It's just a nice reassuring message to anyone who might feel isolated for any reason, there is good in you, even if yourself or others don't see it.
Just yesterday I was thinking about this video and wishing I could remember the name of your channel. I'm currently rereading Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn which has captivated me since I was a kid. I'm not sure if it's up your alley, but I was a disappointed at the lack of content concerning the story and thought about how much I loved your approach with this video.
I figure it's a pretty long shot, but it would be foolish not to ask especially after this video just popped up in my feed again. You've got a certain flavor of talent that helps me to get lost in the best parts of my brain, and I'm sure I don't just speak for myself. Experiencing your take on such a layered story would be a wonderful treat.
But either way, I still enjoy your work and I'll make sure to turn the notifications on this time.
Kidnapped is just about a kid making a wild story to explain why they are late. That's it
Poetry is made to look deeper. You don’t have to, but it’s okay for others to do it if they want to
I loved these books when I was a kid, and I'm sure I read all of them as much as I could. I was an avid reader then and couldn't get enough. I grew up in the 80s, and my mom was one of those moms. The funny thing is that I'm finding out right now that her actions weren't based on her own observations; she was part of a movement. She wanted those books taken away from me for good, and I never knew why. In fact, that's the most involved I remember her being in anything I read. She didn't care about any of my most favorite stories. But of course. Of course someone else had to tell her that I was in danger, and she had to take control without a second thought. I think she was unsuccessful in her quest, and ironically, I just drifted back into my fantasy world of dissociation where I could be safe and happy while mom went off to fight some war that I didn't understand. Over time I read less and less, and now I struggle to get through any article without reading the same sentences over and over and over. I don't read books at all. I was raised southern evangelical in Texas, and my family is part of MAGA. I became an atheist and cut off my family completely. I might as well be a tree stump. 🤓
As an elementary school teacher I had my own well-loved copies of A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends taken by students. I don’t mind at all especially considering many of my students come from homes where reading isn’t always prioritized. I think it’s important for kids to have those special books to read over and over again. I hope they are still being read to this day. I guarantee Ms. Evans is happy knowing that her book has brought you joy for so many years. Books should always spread joy
i had never read silversteins work before, as i live in a non-english speaking country, and was more into prose than poetry as a child, but these poems were so evocative that if i do have children of my own i would like to teach them english to read these to them. (granted, there might be translations out there, but it's hard to say if they would have the same feeling as the originals. perhaps i could read them both for the sake of comparison, if that day comes in a decade or so)
It's tempting to read A Light in the Attic as a metaphor for consciousness - the body is the house, and the light is the soul - you can see it from outside, through the eyes. But the line, "Though the house is dark and shuttered" calls this interpretation into question. If the house is the body, is this person dead? But then, there wouldn't be a light on in the attic either. Are they in poor health? A coma? It feels like I'm reading too deep, but... you never know. Since the book with its title was dedicated to his daughter, it could be completely literal - he saw a flickering light in the attic of some destitute home, and hoped, somehow, that it was his daughter looking back at him.
The one poem I can't come up with an explanation for is Monsters I've Met. I must be missing something. Obviously, the theme of appearances/fears being misleading in regards to the truth is present. But those last two lines... what do they mean?
Thinking about it from a child's perspective, perhaps he thinks the "right time" to meet these monsters would be when they're doing what's expected of them - stealing souls, drinking blood, etc. So by saying he's meeting them at the "wrong time," it's like saying he's meeting them outside of work, so it _feels_ wrong.
Maybe the goal with the poem is to teach the reader that people aren't one-dimensional. Like seeing a teacher outside of school, a child might be afraid that she'll scold him or give him more homework - but of course she won't, she's her own person with a life outside of work. The child is expecting a monster (person) to act like their job, but since it's the "wrong time," they behave differently than expected?
Not sure why your channel came up in my feed, but man am I glad it did. Thank you for this video and all of your others, which I’m off to binge now. At the very least you gained one happy new subscriber today.
As for Silverstein, we read his work in school and I was a huge fan. I didn’t remember the darkness, I remembered the silly wordplay the most. But having gone back to his work as an older adult, I am struck by the loneliness in his work. Maybe it’s colored so much by The Giving Tree, but his work feels so melancholy and often downright sad, in usually a beautiful way. We need more Shel Silverstein’s in our world, and fewer of the types of people who try to ban his (or anyone else’s) art from being seen or read by our children.
“nobody” was one of my favorite poems as a kid. i had all of silverstein’s books and that one just really struck me. i’d read it over and over - yet i had forgotten about it until
now!! thank you for reminding me.
18:57 - That poem is almost visionary. I want to send this to those of my students that hand in essays that are clearly ChatGPT products.
I loved the giving tree as a kid. I never really read the poetry as a kid because It sort of scared me whenever I opened the books.
I can still remember being in 1st grade, and getting to go back into my kindergarten classroom to read The Giving Tree aloud to the new group of students in there. I loved that book, still do, and felt like I was sharing such a treasure when I got to read it then. It always tugged at my heart, but I can't read it at all now without bawling. And I sometimes wonder how it will feel to read it when I'm 90 years old- if I make it that far
The kidnapping poem is about the innocents of childhood lying. The narrative is synthesized right out of a Hollywood movie and told by a child to a teacher. The worst thing in the child's mind is the immediate issue of being late for school. But the absolute over-kill of an excuse and the silver-screen narrative gives that away.
I feel like a lot of people forget that growing up in the 80s and 90s, there was a huge "stranger danger" movement. Just, constant bombardment with "don't take candy from strangers" or "don't get in someone's van who you don't know" from every media soapbox. I always saw the Kidnapped story as a kid who's been late a lot and has gotten caught in a lie by not being able to provide details to obvious follow up questions, so they're figuring out their story ahead of time to answer all the questions. "ok, so what's definitely not my fault? If I got kidnapped. But who did it? Three guys offering candy, like I get told about all the time, and I'll even say that I said no so that I can say I did what the adults told me to do. So, really, it's like it's their fault, right? Ok, but how did they do it? They stuffed me in a limousine. Ok, but why didn't I get out? They tied my hands with wire. Ok, but where did they take me? I don't know because they made it so I couldn't see or hear." And the ultimate punch line was that they didn't answer the final question: ok, so you got kidnapped and were tied up in an unfamiliar location 20 minutes away by car. How did you get to school? That said, all of the other interpretations I've seen could be equally valid, and it's fascinating to hear how everyone else's different experiences shape how they read the poetry.
The dishes poem taught me about weaponised incompetence at 8 years old
🤣
Thank you for this video!
When I was a kid, maybe about third or fourth grade, I couldn't get enough of Silverstein. I had ADHD and anxiety but was undiagnosed at the time, and I didn't have a ton of friends. I was worried about coming across as "annoying" or "too much" a lot of the time, so I spent a lot of time reading. I remember getting my work done as soon as possible so I could sit there and read Shel Silverstein poems for the rest of the class period; my teacher had a few collections, and I would read them over and over again. I think I even memorized a few. I loved the linguistic jokes, the macabre humor, the way they would make me want to laugh or cry at times. Some of them scared me (especially a few in "Don't Bump the Glump"), but I couldn't stop reading them.
After getting my degree in English and watching this video, I can't help but have a new appreciation for Silverstein's work. The poem about the thumb made me laugh as a kid; I thought the imagery of a thumb with a weird little face was funny. But looking back, I think I liked that poem in part because I related to it. Like the speaker in the poem, I was also nervous about people thinking I was weird, or laughing at me. The "thumb" felt a lot like my own issues with social anxiety, but because it was presented in a silly, surreal way, I enjoyed the poem. It makes me want to go back and read his work again, to see how I view it now as an adult with a greater understanding and appreciation of both myself and the English language.
I remembered many of these poems from reading his books as a child, but I had forgotten “The Little Boy and the Old Man” which seems to me from an adult’s perspective incredibly profound, and hit me the hardest out of any of the poems you highlighted. Great video, thank you for sharing.
Silverstein was a fun and easy way to get me to read. As a dyslexic, I would avoid reading whenever possible; however, his books helped me to practice, practice, and practice. Now at 46, I still read slowly, but I have learned to find joy in books.
When my daughter was younger and I was deployed, she fell behind her class in reading. The first thing I thought of was Shel Silverstein, I ordered her his books and had her read them to me on our phone calls. Now as an adult in her 20s, she is never without a book in her bag.
Some of his poems may be controversial, but that is what makes them fun! For me, someone learning the joy of reading is more important than trying to shield our kids.
i don't think i ever realized that _A Light in the Attic_ was his main claim to fame. because for me as a kid it was always _Where the Sidewalk Ends._ my sister and i had that one on audiobook, performed (spoken, sung, and shouted) by Shel Silverstein himself. those performances are all ingrained in my psyche as deep as anything
i had the interesting experience of re-listening to the poem "Enter this deserted house" as an adult, and man do i have a new appreciation for it. i choose to interpret it as an allegory (if that's the right term here) for the Earth. he describes this deserted house as being home to increasingly wild beings, before capping it off with the revelation that "I dwell here, and so do you." and that just speaks to me so much about how the world is not _ours._ rather, we're just another entry in the endless list of organisms that call this place home. and if we find that frightening or foreboding, good. that's exactly what it is
I liked Kidnapped, but then again, my sense of humor is dark. The end line was comic relief 😅
It's funny, because that one is straightforward enough to be disturbing, but when I was a kid we would play stuff like kidnapping in about that amount of detail. It wouldn't have bothered me one but.
Yeah, that poem is definitely all stuff within the wheelhouse of kids. Kids are morbid because they don't understand the weight of their dark humor and play. To a kid, being shot and dying is the same as being hit with a dodge ball and being out of the game
I have a memory of one of my friends reading that poem aloud, and when he got to the end the rest of us laughed and went "Oooh!!" and "You just told the biggest lie EVER!" in that "you're going to be in such big trouble" voice kids use. If any of us thought it was disturbing, I didn't pick up on it.
I always read it kinda staccato and out of breath , adding detail after detail to make sure the lateness is overlooked , I imagine the kid telling it looking up from under furrowed brow , peeking to gauge if the teacher is buying it yet. 😂great stuff .
My favorite Shel Silverstein poem that’s always deeply resonated with me since I was a child is called Headache.
Having a tree growing up out of me
Is often a worrisome thing.
I’m twisty and thorny and branchy and bare
But wait till you see me in Spring.
This was an EXCELLENT video! I loved the way you carefully went through some of his most fascinating poetry.
Something you didn't mention about the Big G and little a poem: while I'm not a religious person, and don't often look for/read into religious interpretations, but I always felt that Silverstein was imagining this poem as "Big G God" talking to "little a adam." The fact that it's G and a didn't feel arbitrary to me, and it's worth thinking about, I think!
Where the sidewalk ends is the one I have read over and over. I had the cassette of him reading a lot of them, sometimes playing guitar as accompaniment. The other books are great too, but I think that one came back into popularity in the early 80s as that’s when I began reading it. I remember being glad I was allergic to peanuts so I couldn’t suffer the fate of the king in Peanut Butter Sandwich
i love your channel, yes for the insightful analysis and obvious care that you show when you talk about something you very clearly love, but also because sometimes its just really nice to have someone gently read you a poem :)
I LOVED these books as a kid. I must have read Where the Sidewalk Ends at least a hundred times over, because I could never find A Light in the Attic (and hmm... I wonder why) And although "Masks" isn't in any of these three books, it's easily favorite poem of his. Despite its simplicity it's always remained deeply relevant to me. Increasingly so, in fact. It goes like this:
She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by--
And never knew.
Of course the meaning is pretty clear, but for whatever reason it struck a particularly resonant chord for me. I just so highly value authenticity/honesty, but still consistently find myself caving to the pressure to alter my behavior for others, when all I truly care about is the most honest level of communication possible. To pass by someone who may truly understand you is so clearly a fate worse than potential ridicule, the phrasing of the poem hammers it home in an utterly undeniable way. It's a constant reminder for me to remain as real as possible 😎
(Also I memorized the entirety of the Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout poem to impress people)
I used to LOVE Shel Silversteen books as a kid. Your video has reminded me how much I still love them. I guess I know what I'll be rereading when I get home from work today. What really struck me as I was listening to your video is how much of an impression these poems left on me, even now that I can't remember their specifics. He really helped me form a few of my fundamental views on the world, and the weird creepy vibes aleays made me feel a bit more at home, if that makes sense? I felt like the world was weird and creepy place, and he was just acknowledging it with words. It was comforting.
This is a rare occasion that a RUclips video has genuinely made me cry. These books have so many memories tied to them for me of my early childhood. I have them on my shelf to this day and I’m almost 20.
It was really beautiful watching you go through these poems I read as a child, and despite how long ago it was, still remembering every single one of them.
I absolutely loved Shel Silverstein as a kid and read all his poetry collections. I just ordered them all for my daughter who is an avid reader- can’t wait to share these with her.
What If is one of the best explanations of what Generalized Anxiety Disorder feels like from the person with GAD. Because I have GAD and this poem hits way to close to home.
Especially the weird, senseless and irrational 'whatifs' that seem to pop up just to stir up the more realistic fears.
@@jackpijjin4088 Exactly.
I’m feeding the algorithm as it’s the best I can do to offer support right now.
The odd thing about growing up with a writer for a parent, a guy fresh out of grad school who unexpectedly found himself raising a little girl alone, is that I missed out on Shel Silverstein as a kid….I read what I could reach on Dad’s bookshelves: Roethke, Hopkins, Yeats, Wallace Stevens…a kid-version of Memorizing Mo. Thank you for sharing these, I finally see why he is such a deservedly beloved poet. (I still have a scar on my cheek from a tumble taken trying to climb my way to the upper shelves of that bookcase. Proud to have it.)
My favourite Silverstein work is Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back. It’s more prose than poetry, and has a quiet, thoughtful message that resonates with me even until today. I’d encourage anyone in this comment section to check it out.
I am 52 and I’ve always loved Shel Silverstein’s poetry. As a child, I thought it was hilarious, especially the illustrations. Some were even a little naughty 😂. I guess that’s why some parents didn’t like them. As an adult, some of his poems still make me laugh out loud, but now some make me cry too. You’ve inspired me to start sharing Silverstein’s amazing work with my students!
I've only just come across your channel and I've never been into poetry, though I didn't mind it in school. I'd never heard of Silverstein either, but I'm thinking about buying a copy of one his books now. There's something so wonderful about art that can communicate complex feelings and emotions to kids and adults (I'm a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes for a similar-ish reason), and though I don't know what it would be like for a kid to read these, I found them very cathartic. Particularly whatif, something so normal for us all to experience, that has plagued me almost every night since I was a kid. I don't know for sure, but I imagine a young me would have found that very comforting. It's a shame some parents would want to try and prevent children from exploring and understanding negative emotions in such a healthy way. Thank you for such a thoughtful video, and I'll be honest I only wrote this comment to give myself some time to reflect on it, which I think says a lot about the quality in this world of fast-media doomscrolling and binge-watching.
I think there's a hint of Silverstein missing "Nobody" in the Nobody poem which I thought was very relateable. Lonliness can be terrible but also comforting and addicting.
When I was a kid, I took "Put Something In" very literally and wrote (in ballpoint pen) my own poem on that page of the book. I wasn't even old enough to know how to spell properly. Now I'm mad that I ruined my copy of one of my favorite books, but I can't help but think that Shel Silverstein would approve of it.
Speaking as an artist myself (an illustrator, not a poet, but I think itd close enough for this context) Silverstein would definitely like it. The fact you were so moved by his work that you immediately wanted to create your own is one of the biggest compliments you could give to a creative.
I can't remember who, but theres an artist out there who said his favorite response a fan has ever given to recieving one of his autographed drawings was a small child who was so excited that they literally ate the paper. Swallowed it whole. 😂
Thanks for this trip down memory lane! If I could issue a small correction: the push to ban books is often not coming from parents directly, but from extremists who hide behind "parents' rights" as a wedge to push their hateful agendas. They will often prop up a handful of parents from the local community to make themselves more legitimate, but if you look at the rank and file of these organizations you'll find that it isn't a group for parents at all. That's not to say that people without children can't be part of the discussion on education, just that we should be careful and not take the extremists' framing of the situation at face value.
Smut books and porn have no place in school. You intentionally misnomer these movements as extremist because it is easier to discredit a valid argument when you do that. Surely you've seen some of those "books" being read at school board meetings by parents, who are then told they aren't allowed and it is inappropriate, and their mics cut off. Parents don't want their children to be groomed. These aren't books like 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird, or A Light in The Attic. The books that parent's don't want in the hands of little children are literal pornography.
Thank you for doing this video. I've loved the works of Shel Silverstein since I was a child. The first story I fell in love with is The Giving Tree then fell in love with Where the Sidewalk Ends. His poetry and stories always brought me hope and laughter. His poetic descriptions are stellar. Thanks again.