I’ll never be able to reconcile Shel Silverstein’s art and stories with his appearance. He looked like he would gladly murder you with a shard of broken glass and then throw your body directly into a shark.
you have odd notions about masculine faces.
real gentle-lookin’ sneer
really gentle looking when not say, in the grainiest over inked newspaper photo you could find.
buddy it’s literally the photo he put on the back of The Giving Tree
Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad From a worn-out picture that my mother’d had, And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye. He was big and bent and gray and old, And I looked at him and my blood ran cold And I said: “My name is ‘Sue!’ How do you do! Now your gonna die!!”
Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes And he went down, but to my surprise, He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear. But I busted a chair right across his teeth And we crashed through the wall and into the street Kicking and a’ gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.
I tell ya, I’ve fought tougher men But I really can’t remember when, He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile. I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss, He went for his gun and I pulled mine first, He stood there lookin’ at me and I saw him smile.
And he said: “Son, this world is rough And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along. So I give ya that name and I said goodbye I knew you’d have to get tough or die And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.”
He said: “Now you just fought one hell of a fight And I know you hate me, and you got the right To kill me now, and I wouldn’t blame you if you do. But ya ought to thank me, before I die, For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye Cause I’m the son-of-a-bitch that named you “Sue.’”
–lyrics, ”A Boy Named ‘Sue’”, Shel Silverstein, 1969.
I’m all strung-out, and, my money’s spent Can’t really tell ya’ where last year went But, I’ve given up paying my bills for Lent My landlord, he says he wants his rent Fuck ‘em!
Hey, now, the women they come, the women they go The hens start to cackle when the cock starts to crow Hell, I take ‘em in when the warm winds blow But, I boot ‘em in the ass once it starts to snow Cause, fuck them!
Yeah, got a letter from my folks, and, they say they’re in debt They say that things are as bad as they can possibly get Y’know, I haven’t answered that letter yet I might use it to light my cigarette Cause, fuck them!
What’d they ever do for me anyway? Threw me outta the house when I was twenty-nine years old And cut off my allowance Fuck ‘em!
Hey, a woman come around and handed me a line About a lot of little orphan kids sufferin’ and dyin’ Shit, I give her a quarter, cause one of ‘em might be mine Yeah, the rest of those bastards can keep right on cryin’ I mean, fuck kids! Throw up on your shoulder, piss in your lap, Never give you nothing Fuck ‘em!
I had a fight last night with a big lumberjack I spent most the fight laying flat on my back You know he beat me up fair, and, that’s a fact But, I busted his head as soon as he turned his back Cause, fuck “fair fighting”!
Yeah, y’know, my junkie buddy got the shakes again He give me five bucks and sent me out in the rain I’m supposed to bring back something to kill his pain, heh, hehAw, shit! I took the bread and I jumped on a train’ Cause, fuck junkies! Menace to society, break into your house, steal your TV set And go pawn it, and stick up gas stations, then wanna get rehabilitated right next-door to you Fuck them!
Hey, I caught a cold, I’m chilled and wet And, I’m coughing blood, and I’m short of breath And at the foot of my bed sits Old Man Death He says: “ Hey Shel, ” he says, “ ain’t you ready to go yet? “And, I says… ” You’re the Devil’s favorite pet! “ And, I says…"He’s waitin’ for ya…And, you’re late…"And I says:
“FUCK HIM! LET THE MOTHER WAIT! I GOT THINGS I AIN’T DONE YET, AND BILLS I HAVEN’T NOT PAID! I GOT PEOPLE I AIN’T BAD TALKED AND I GOT CHICKS THAT I HAVEN’T KNOCKED UP AND LEFT YET! I’VE GOT things TO DO…PLACES T’ GO…. PEOPLE T’ DO!HA HA-HA-HA!…” How’s that?
the thing is, shel silverstein absolutely was the sort of stoned maniac who would gladly murder you with a broken glass bottle and throw you to a shark. he was just also the dude who’d make you coffee and give you a blanket and a couch to sleep on while you tried to get yourself sober, and it’s in his latter line of thinking about, you know, people that he ended up deciding kids needed poetry to enliven their screwy days just as much as the screwy adults he usually wrote for did, and because he was good at it (and because nobody pays attention to folk singers anyway so his recording career went unremembered by all but the singers and engineers and producers who worked in the studios with him), that’s what he’s known for today.
obviously, at 30k notes, someone else has pointed this out before me, but i imagine most of the people following me, especially those mutuals i’ve seen this from already, haven’t seen that person’s post, lost as it probably is in those aforementioned thirty thousand notes. so it bears repeating!
I really love this because it illustrates something I think a lot of us who were born after the American Roots/Folk/Acoustic waves of the 50s and 60s that a lot of it is actually kinda dark?
Even when you read the collections of popular folk songs that are produced now, check the date of origin or popular variation. You’ll find a lot of stuff that seems twee at first, or that plays as much more light hearted than the lyrics provided.
Almost a springy, jaunty Gothic that totally maps onto Shel Silverstein’s work. And, really, makes total sense that he worked in music at the same time. For all the clever absurdism and jovial surrealism in his poetry, there’s often a vague sense of menace to the worlds he created. In some cases it was dispelled by the nonsensical nature of his storytelling, while in others (like the poem above) the menace lingers past the last line.
He’s not alone, either, when you recognize that Henson and Sendak (among others) were producing children’s media with a similar air of…idk, wonder comes to mind. Which doesn’t feel entirely right, but it’s adequate enough to capture the magical element all their work.
It’s not a dumbed down magic, where consequences are absent or neatly resolved at the conclusion. Rather, they all took kids seriously and made the (imho, correct) assumption that treating kids as aware, conscientious, emotional beings rather than “practice adults.” Which meant leaving in menace and the spectre of incompleteness/dissatisfaction, while still encouraging their younger audiences to look past that.
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