“Do a loony-goony dance ‘cross the kitchen floor. Put something silly in the world that ain’t been there before”(Silverstein). Shel Silverstein believed in the creativity of poems and life itself. He changes the lives of many in which he writes in such way that helps us to understand that one does not have to make sense or conform to societies standards. Being unique, coloring outside the lines, and thinking outside the box is what he left for this world and the people in it. Silverstein believed in the uniqueness of every individual; he believed that the best inventions didn't make sense when they were first dreamt up. Shel Allan Silverstein was born on September 25, 1930, in Chicago. He died on May 10, 1999. He is an American poet, …show more content…
He wished to be popular with girls and wanted to be a baseball player, but he wasn’t a gig to girls nor did he have any athletic ability. Instead, he started to spend time alone drawing and writing. He enlisted in the U.S Army in 1950, in which he served in Japan and Korea. While in the army, he started rot experiment with writing poems. He was first published in 1963, in which he published his first book children’s book, “Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back”. He rose to success as a poet through his most famous poem. This poem is known as “The Giving Tree”; it was written in 1964. He started to write poems for Playboy magazine and gained much national recognition through this …show more content…
He writes with “creative license” to make his point. In which he puts emphasis on a sentence and avoids correcting some of his writing errors when needed. He allows errors in his poetry as long as it creates the rhythm of his composed poem. In other words, Silverstein does not pay too close of an attention to the autocorrects that the computer makes for his grammatical errors. If he did, he would not be able to create such rhythm and achieve such great meaning to some of his poems. Silverstein focuses mainly on himself and his thoughts rather than the tools to create such a perfect grammar free
One of his most famous poems was "Lift Every Voice and Sing." His brother later added music to the poem. It is considered to be the unofficial "Negro National Anthem". It was a bold piece of work that spoke of the struggle of the African American in America and his optimistic hope for a better future.
with John and made him enlist in the Marines. While in the service he published "Moonlight on the Potomac Waltzes". That was his first published composition and the beginning of a very successful career. After spending 8 years in the Marines, he was discharged.
The poignant book, known as The Giving Tree, is loved by many people of all ages. “Silverstein was born on September 25, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois and began writing and drawing at an early age” (poets.org).... ... middle of paper ... ...
Langston Hughes was born on February 1st, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He started education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He went on to write and publish his first work, a poem called, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in Crisis magazine. He then continued his education at Columbia University in New York in 1921. He then lived for sometime in Paris and after returning to the United States, he worked in Washington D.C. as a busboy. Later after that, Vachel Lindsay discovered Hughes literary talents. Hughes talents did not only exist in poetry, he also expanded his talent into music, play writing, and short stories, for example the “Simple” stories. His most prominent work however was written and published during the Harlem Renaissance a time where many other African-American authors were showcasing their work and being published. Hughes however, stood above the rest with his multiple talents and work which spread across the board. The white society of America at the time of the Harlem Renaissance and years after began to label him as a radical. Hughes remained extremely prolific to the very end of his life. Hughes published over forty books, including a series of children’s books. However, if you add his translations and his many anthologies of black writing, the amount of books he has published would double. He remained a controversial figure, having been considered a dangerous radical in the 1940s. Hughes was now, as he retained his lifelong commitment to racial integration, rejected by 1960s radicals considered to be a part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. However, that would not stop Hughes from being recognized as one of the important black a...
He has the knowledge of philosophy and psychology. He attempted to write when he was a youth, but he made a choice to pursue a literary career in 1919. After he published Cane, he became part of New York literary circles. He objected both rivalries that prevailed in the fraternity of writers and to attempts to promote him as a black writer (Claypool 3). In Washington in 1921 he took care of his grandparents and wrote full time....
After graduation in 1920, he went to Mexico to teach English for a year. While on the train to Mexico, he wrote the poem “the Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was published in the June 1921 issue of The Crisis, a leading black publication. After his academic year at Columbia, he lived for a year in Harlem, embarked on a six-month voyage as a cabin boy on a merchant freighter bound for West Africa. After its return, he took a job on a ship sailing to Holland.
He lived life to the fullest and had some ups and some downs. He succeed and he failed but when he failed he learned. There are still secrets that are never to be seen but for now we know that the silly poems and deep dark truths are all true. Silverstein has more than one meaning in his work it just depends on who's reading it to truly understand what it's telling you. Everything that happened in his life affected him in his writing. Him lacking parental guidance affected him because he wanted love and nobody gave it. That’s why he resorted to his writing for care. He knew that if he needed something to count on, it was his writing. All of his achievements and failures affected him. When he failed at something he realized that he's not just gonna get stuff handed to him. He’s gonna have to work for it and get it himself. When he succeeded he learned that when you put in the work you get what you want in return. Him always being alone as a child made him want to be alone as an adult. It affected him because he wanted ninety percent of his personal life in his life not the whole worlds. This made him pull back in his writing, he wasn't writing to his full potential. He didn't want people to know his ocean deep secrets that he has sleepless nights trying to forget about. He writes about what he finds important, therefore even if he
...ds including a Grammy for his song writing(1). In fact, Silverstein is a very different kind of writer and poet because he has so many styles which help him to connect with his readers during the poem which has made him really respond with his audience. In the Giving Tree he made it feel like that he was a child and was growing up like every child does and him having a relationship with friend/tree which would help him out time to time. “There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, So just give me a happy middle And a very happy start(4).”
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. After his father left and his mother passed away, he lived with John and Frances Allan. He would write poetry on the back of John’s business papers. Poe went to the University of Virginia where he went into debt for gambling to cover the cost of his schooling. When he was kicked out of the university he enrolled at West Point and that’s when he truly committed to writing poetry again. He earned the nickname Father of the Detective Story when he wrote the first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. In 1845, Poe became a sensation when he published The Raven. He mysteriously died on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland (biography.com).
	In Sely Friday’s reference to a biography, Shel Silverstein was quoted as saying, " . . . 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." Because of his rejection by some of his peers, he found his own hobby: entertaining others. During the 1950’s, Silverstein even served as a member of the United States Armed Forces. While in this position, he was employed as a cartoonist to help cheer up the troops during the Korean War. In 1956, the writer worked again as a cartoonist, but this time for a little-known magazine called Playboy. Despite this wide range of literary audiences, Silverstein’s main purpose was to entertain.
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star after graduating from high school in 1917. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver in the Italian infantry and was wounded just before his 19th birthday. Hospitalized, Hemingway fell in love with an older nurse. Later, while working in Paris as a correspondent for the Toronto Star, he became involved with the expatriate literary and artistic circle surrounding Gertrude Stein. During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway served as a correspondent on the loyalist side. He fought in World War II and then settled in Cuba in 1945. In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. After his expulsion from Cuba by the Castro regime, he moved to Idaho. In his life, Hemingway married four times and wrote numerous essays, short stories and novels. The effects of Hemingway's lifelong depressions, illnesses and accidents caught up with him. In July 1961, he committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho. What remains, are his works, the product of a talented author.
Not much is known about Shel Silverstein’s personal life because he very rarely gave interviews or spoke in public. Shel Silverstein was born on September 25, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois. He served in the US Forces in Korea and Japan in the early 1950s. While in the military he was an artist for the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. After he arrived home, he became a photographer, writer, and cartoonist for Playboy magazine. He was also a song writer. He wrote hit songs for Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Bobby Bare. In 2002, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He also produced a few films and wrote screenplays. Though never honored for his technical aspects of his poems, he is considered one of America’s greatest poets.
The three poems, “Negro”, “I Too”, and “Song for a Dark Girl” were written by an African American male named Langston Hughes. Hughes was born on February 1st, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. During his childhood, Hughes was familiar with the struggles of being an African American. By reason of his heritage and color, Hughes lived his childhood life in poverty and loneliness. Hughes’ farther left to Mexico because he felt indignation towards the fact that racism made him give up his dream of being a lawyer. His mother would frequently go out in a hopeless chase to find a stable job to support her family. His life experience led him to take refuge in books; which led to the love of literature and the interest in poetry. He started writing poetry when he was in high school at the young age of 17. His work was about the concern of soci...
Langston Hughes is one of the most famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Mississippi in 1902 and later moved to Ohio where he attended Central High School. When Hughes graduated high school he went to Mexico to visit his father and while crossing the Mississippi River he was inspired to write “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was his first published poem when he was eighteen years old. When Hughes returned to the United States in 1924 the Harlem Renaissance was in “full swing”. In 1925 at the age of twenty-three Hughes received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues”, Hughes was famous for incorporating blues and jazz rhymes into his poetry, which is what he did in his poem “The Weary Blues”. Hughes was at a banquet where he received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues” and was asked by a man named Carl Van Vechten if he had enough poems to make a book. Hughes said yes and Van Vechten promised that he would find Hughes ...
Silverstein included a vast amount of hyperboles in his poem. One example would be when the little girl says “I’m sure that my left leg is broke—“. In reality the little