Shel Silverstein

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Shel Silverstein

Chris Senn
March 6, 2000
572 55 3153
Research Paper
While I was growing up as a child, there were three authors whose works I read devoutly. One was Dr. Seuss and I liked his books so much that I am proud to say I have read every one published. The second author who had a profound impact on me was Jan Bernstein who is responsible for that loveable family The Bernstein Bears. The third is a poet, which is odd because I never have liked poetry. Shel Silverstein’s children’s poetry books were the only poetry I read until I was twelve and are the one’s I still enjoy the most today as a young man.
Shel Silverstein is known to most as the critically acclaimed children’s poet, and before this project, I was unaware of the other things he had done. Shel Silverstein also did cartoons, served for his country during the Korean War, wrote folk songs, played the guitar, and probably most shocking to me, were his poems and drawings for Playboy Magazine which depicted fairly gruesome sexual acts as well as drug use, especially his own. Life experience seems to be the influence for his NC-17 rated material but I was curious to who influenced his witty, lyrical children’s pieces. When studying Silverstein’s poetry, you can see how the nonsense subjects and rhymes look similar to Edward Lear’s nonsense poetry of one hundred and fifty years earlier and how the poetry of Ogden Nash, which Silverstein might have possibly read as a child, had influences on Shel’s own pieces.
However, the conclusion I have reached is purely hypothetical. Shel Silverstein once said he had no influences on his poetic style. In a 1975 interview with Jean Merciar, published in the February 24, 1975 issue of Publisher’s Weekly, Silverstein said,
“When I was kid- 12, 14, around there- I would much rather have been
a good baseball player or a hit with the girls. But I couldn’t play ball,
I couldn’t dance. Luckily the girls didn’t want me; not much I could
do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that
I didn’t have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my
own style, I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley,
a Price and a Steinberg. I never even saw their work till I was around
thirty. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already
into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn’t rather
make love, but the work has become a habit”
Even though Shel says nobody influenced his artistic abiliti...

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