Poetry

I'm not one for poetry. I hated when we would read poems in English classes. But growing up, there was one poet who I liked to read - Shel Silverstein. I asked Carla if she had ever heard of him, and she said no. So when we went to the library last week, I had to check out his book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" to teach her what fine poetry is really like.

Apparently, she does not appreciate fine poetry.

If you don't know who Shel Silverstein is, he writes children's poetry. Some of it is quite humorous, some of it can be somewhat vulgar. Being a nostalgic kind of person, the poems brought back many memories from childhood. My favorite poems are Captain Hook (about the difficulties of living with a hook for a hand), Sick (about a girl who gives every excuse imaginable not to go to school), The Bagpipe That Didn't Say No (about a turtle that fell in love with a bagpipe, only to have his heart broken in the end), and My Beard. My Beard is the only poem that I have ever memorized, and I can still remember it to this day:

My hair grows to my toes
I never wear no clothes
I wrap my hair around my bare
And down the road I goes

Ahhh, the classics.

Sadly, Shel died of a heart attack in 1999. Here is a link to his biography.