Shel Silverstein Dies

cluening writes "I was shocked to see that one of the best poetry writers, Shel Silverstein, had died. Although not really technical in nature, I am sure his poems and drawings were enjoyed by a whole lot of the Slashdot community... " I've enjoyed several of his coffee tables books over the past winter-it's sad to see people like this go. Update: 05/11 04:25 by H :Thanks to Jesse Berney for sending us the Washington Post write-up about Shel.

Comments

Here's the whole thing, "The Smoke Off"

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon, let's see if we can take an AC's post to Score==5!

"The Smoke Off", by Shel Silverstein.

Now in the laid back California town of sunny San Raphael
Lived a girl named Pearly Sweetcake, you prob'ly knew her well.
She'd been stoned fifteen of her eighteen years and the story was widely told
That she could smoke 'em faster than anyone could roll.
Her legend finally reached New York, that Grove Street walk-up flat
Where dwelt The Calistoga Kid, a beatnik from the past
With long browned lightnin' fingers he takes a cultured toke
And says, "Hell, I can roll 'em faster, Jim, than any chick can smoke!"

So a note gets sent to San Raphael, "For the Championship of the World
The Kid demands a smoke off!" "Well, bring him on!" says Pearl,
"I'll grind his fingers off his hands, he'll roll until he drops!"
Says Calistog, "I'll smoke that twist till she blows up and pops!"
So they rent out Yankee Stadium and the word is quickly spread
"Come one, come all, who walk or crawl, price - just two lids a head
And from every town and hamlet, over land and sea they speed
The world's greatest dopers, with the Worlds greatest weed
Hashishers from Morocco, hemp smokers from Peru
And the Shamnicks from Bagun who puff the deadly Pugaroo
And those who call it Light of Life and those that call it boo.

See the dealers and their ladies wearing turquoise, lace, and leather
See the narcos and the closet smokers puffin' all together
From the teenies who smoke legal to the ones who've done some time
To the old man who smoked "reefer" back before it was a crime
And the grand old house that Ruth built is filled with the smoke and cries
Of fifty thousand screaming heads all stoned out of their minds.
And they play the national anthem and the crowd lets out a roar
As the spotlight hits The Kid and Pearl, ready for their smokin' war
At a table piled up high with grass, as high as a mountain peak
Just tops and buds of the rarest flowers, not one stem, branch or seed.

Maui Wowie, Panama Red and Acapulco Gold.
Kif from East Afghanistan and rare Alaskan Cold.
Sticks from Thailand, Ganja from the Islands, and Bangkok's Bloomin' Best.
And some of that wet imported shit that capsized off Key West.
Oaxacan tops and Kenya Bhang and Riviera Fleurs.
And that rare Manhatten Silver that grows down in the New York sewers.
And there's bubblin' ice cold lemonade and sweet grapes by the bunches.
And there's Hershey's bars, and Oreos, 'case anybody gets the munchies.
And the Calistoga Kid, he sneers, and Pearley, she just grins.
And the drums roll low and the crowd yells "GO!" and the world's first Smoke Off begins.

Kid flicks his magic fingers once and ZAP! that first joint's rolled.
Pearl takes one drag with her mighty lungs and WOOSH! that roach is cold.
Then The Kid he rolls his Super Bomb that'd paralyze a moose.
And Pearley takes one super hit and SLURP! that bomb' defused.
Then he rolls three in just ten seconds and she smokes 'em up in nine,
And everybody sits back and says, "This just might take some time."
See the blur of flyin' fingers, see the red coal burnin' bright
As the night turns into mornin' and the mornin' fades to night
And the autumn turns to summer and a whole damn year is gone
But the two still sit on that roach-filled stage, smokin' and rollin' on
With tremblin' hands he rolls his jays with fingers blue and stiff
She coughs and stares with bloodshot gaze, and puffs through blistered lips.
And as she reaches out her hand for another stick of gold
The Kid he gasps, "Goddamn it, bitch, there's nothin' left to roll!"
"Nothin' left to roll?", screams Pearl, "Is this some twisted joke?"
"I didn't come here to fuck around, man, I come here to SMOKE!"
And she reaches 'cross the table And grabs his bony sleeves
And she crumbles his body between her hands like dried and brittle leaves
Flickin' out his teeth and bones like useless stems and seeds
And then she rolls him in a Zig Zag and lights him like a roach.
And the fastest man with the fastest hands goes up in a puff of smoke.

In the laid-back California town of sunny San Raphael
Lives a girl named Pearly Sweetcake, you prob'ly know her well.
She's been stoned twenty-one of her twenty-four years, and the story's widely told.
How she still can smoke them faster than anyone can roll
While off in New York City on a street that has no name.
There's the hands of the Calistoga Kid in the Viper Hall of Fame
And underneath his fingers there's a little golden scroll
That says, Beware of Bein' the Roller When There's Nothin' Left to Roll.

Uncle Shelby's A-B-Zs

[CarlPatten]

The article didn't mention this old classic of his, which is still in print! Shel Silverstein definitely fits under "Stuff that matters." Thanks for posting the article.

"A Light in the Attic" has just gone out...

[Anti-Sean]

My uncle gave me this book when I was 7...I spent countless hours reading and re-reading this book until i had broken the binding. A few months ago while moving, I happened upon it in a stack of old books. Time to give it another read. "Nobody" was a favorite poem of mine - helped ease the pain of being a 9 year old geek with no friends :) My oldest nephew is 4 - it'll be time to pass it along to him soon. Thanks for everything, Shel...we'll miss you.

-Sean

Not off topic

[Finitistic]

Sad news...If anyone thinks this is off-topic, I would like to let them know that there is a Shel Silverstein poem entitled "The GNOME, the Gnat, and the GNU"!

Thank you to the man that taught me to read.

[telos]

One of the world's most wonderful poets has died. He wrote many things that meant a lot to many different people. He will be missed.

When I was just starting third grade, I was one of the very few students that could not read. The "see dick run, run dick run" books had not quite worked for me. I just could not grasp the see and say method of reading. I cannot do phonics in the English language to this day. I could woo my teachers into believing in my intelligence through my extensive vocabulary and my musical ability, but I could not read more than three words in a row consistantly. Spelling tests were my nightmare.

Our teachers read to us every day, either a poem or a chapter from a children's novel. I loved to listen to the poems from Where the Sidewalk End's or the delicious tales by Roal Dahl in his novellas. I could not read, but it was not for a lack of wanting. My mother read to me at night. I read the OZ books through the sound of her voice, a chapter a night. I could draw, I could speak, and I could sing well ahead of my peers, but they could read.

One day, I decided that I wanted my mother to read a book by Beverly Cleary to me. It was mid-afternoon. My mother had other things that she need to get done, so she told me no. Being stong-willed, I decided that I was going to try to read it myself even though I knew only a few words on sight. Curled up on the couch in the sunlight, I started to get comfortable so that I could try to read the book.

With painful slowness, I silently played with each typed word untill I knew what it was. If I did not know the word at all, I figured it out from the context. At some point in this ardous endevour, something a little bizzare happened. I stopped seeing the words on the page or even hearing the sounds of the sylables. The meter and the letters, everything on the page was gone. All that was left, all that was really necessary, came forth to me as images in my mind. A complete realm flowed forth from this book. I understood in silence, what it meant to read.

I could not prove that I had discovered the secret to most people. I still could not, and honestly to this day cannot, read aloud without faltering and stuttering through the words on the page. I would skip articles and prepositions when asked to read. I still have to ask someone else how to pronounce a word if it is not familliar to me. I do not know phonics, but I do know meanings.

From that day on, I read everything that I could. I needed to catch up to my peers in school. I discovered just how much fun reading can truely be after I finished that 250 or so page book and took up the book that every single person in my class loved to read out of during our playtime. I was reading Where the Sidewalk Ends. I learned meter and time. I also learned the exceptions to the grammatical rules we were taught.

I loved those books more then anything. They were written with little children in mind filled with the good humor of the gross and disgusting stuff. I read from it all of the time. Through those poems, I learned to read and be able to say the words on the pages. It is still very difficult for me, but with out them, I would never have been able to do it at all.

--telos