Where the Sidewalk Ends...And Stevens Begins

     Thank you Alex Miller for re-reminding me of my absolute love of Shel Silverstein poetry! I had a second grade teacher who read us his poems and I made my mom buy me Where the Sidewalk Ends and absolutely loved it as a little girl. I now have a tremendous feeling of guilt for having set aside one of my favorite poets for so long, but after a little online searching I have been reminded and reinvigorated. These are a few of my favorites....

Come In
If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!


        I read Peanut-Butter Sandwich over and over, I think I even used to have parts of it memorized, sadly the words have since been replaced with a decade or so of new knowledge...

Peanut-Butter Sandwich

I'll sing you a poem of a silly young king
Who played with the world at the end of a string,
But he only loved one single thing—
And that was just a peanut-butter sandwich.

His scepter and his royal gowns,
His regal throne and golden crowns
Were brown and sticky from the mounds
And drippings from each peanut-butter sandwich.
His subjects all were silly fools
For he had passed a royal rule
That all that they could learn in school
Was how to make a peanut-butter sandwich.
He would not eat his sovereign steak,
He scorned his soup and kingly cake,
And told his courtly cook to bake
An extra-sticky peanut-butter sandwich.
And then one day he took a bit
And started chewing with delight,
But found his mouth was stuck quite tight
From that last bite of peanut-butter sandwich.
His brother pulled, his sister pried,
The wizard pushed, his mother cried,
"My boy's committed suicide
From eating his last peanut-butter sandwich!"
The dentist came, and the royal doc.
The royal plumber banged and knocked,
But still those jaws stayed tightly locked.
Oh darn that sticky peanut-butter sandwich!
The carpenter, he tried with pliers,
The telephone man tried with wires,
The firemen, they tried with fire,
But couldn't melt that peanut-butter sandwich.
With ropes and pulleys, drills and coil,
With steam and lubricating oil—
For twenty years of tears and toil—
They fought that awful peanut-butter sandwich.
Then all his royal subjects came.
They hooked his jaws with grapplin' chains
And pulled both ways with might and main
Against that stubborn peanut-butter sandwich.
Each man and woman, girl and boy
Put down their ploughs and pots and toys
And pulled until kerack! Oh, joy—
They broke right through that peanut-butter sandwhich
A puff of dust, a screech, a squeak—
The king's jaw opened with a creak.
And then in voice so faint and weak—
The first words that they heard him speak
Were, "How about a peanut-butter sandwich?"

        And the poem that shares the title of the entire collection.....

Where the Sidewalk Ends

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermind wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.” 

      I read these poems and I think of Stevens. I see Stevens more in these poems than I do in Dr.Seuss's writing. Particularly in the Peanut-Butter Sandwich, in the way that the poem goes round and round and then at the end the King asks for the same thing that got him into his situation in the first place. Reading the poem now, as opposed to 12 years ago I can see the circular pattern of the poem, the way we as people have habits and desires that repeat because we like them and they are apart of who we are. But I want to stop there, because I have the Stevinsian perspective and I want to leave the poem as it is meant to be, a poem. Just reading them for the way the words feel in my mouth, and the way my imagination paints the poem in my head. Silverstein, like Stevens, is a master with his words and each word has a purpose and a meaning and that, for me at least, is where I find my place and peace in the poem.
      I think it is also a testament to Silverstein's abilities that I am as enthralled and wrapped up in his poetry now at 22 as I was at 8 and at 12, and whenever else his poems appeared in my life. Sexson in class today said that Stevens picks up "where the sidewalk ends"...I wasn't sure at the time what he meant, because in my head they went together, a sort of individuation. But now I see that Stevens has picked up where Silverstein left off, I can read the poems I read as a child and now I am actually reading them, with the lens that Wallace Stevens' poem have given me.