To Kristin
with all our love
Merry Christmas!
1981
Before writing about A Light in the Attic, given to me by my parents when I was 12 years old, I need to backtrack to its predecessor, Where the Sidewalk Ends, which I first encountered in the fourth grade, when our class gave it as a going away present to one of our classmates, Susan Choi, whose family was moving to another state in the middle of the school year. We were happy and excited to give her a gift. Even at ten years old, we all knew Susan was special—brilliant and kind. (She would go on, unsurprisingly, to become an award-winning novelist.) We gathered around as she unwrapped her present and unveiled Where the Sidewalk Ends. She thanked us as she flipped through the pages, and our teacher, Mrs. Sylvester, asked her to read a poem aloud. She stood at the front of the room and read “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out,” laughing as she read. “And so it piled up to the ceilings: / Coffee grounds, potato peelings, / Brown bananas, rotten peas, / Chunks of sour cottage cheese.” I found it magical—the rhyming, the drawings—and when I got home from school that day, I breathlessly told my mother all about it. Never one to refuse a child begging for a book, she bought it for me, and my friend Mia and I pored over it together countless times.
I came across A Light in the Attic in a bookstore in Chicago over Christmas break a couple of years later, on a day when our family had taken the South Shore train from South Bend to see the decorated windows at Marshall Fields. I remember the slow shuffling of people along the sidewalk gazing in delight at the elaborate Christmas displays: scenes from Nutcracker, elves, Santa, ice skaters, gingerbread houses, snowmen, and the like. On those excursions, we would have lunch at Fields’s famous Walnut Room, with its towering, fragrant Christmas tree. In fact, I think we may have been in the basement of Fields, which used to have a book section, when I found A Light in the Attic. (I vividly remember picking out a couple of Nancy Drew books there once, too.) I’m a little fuzzy on the details, though. Were we in Chicago? I think we must have been, because I remember my father being there, and on an ordinary day in South Bend, the entire family wouldn’t have been out together browsing a bookstore. Either way, I had the book in my hands and asked my parents if they would buy it for me. No dice. But there it was a short time later under our Christmas tree. Today, it’s not quite as battered and worn as my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends, but it’s clear that I thumbed through its pages many times.
Reading it now after many years, I revel again in Silverstein’s writing, with its humor, wordplay, rollicking rhythms, and whimsical, sometimes sinister drawings that accompany the poems or, more often, play a key role. “Have Fun” depicts a girl happily swimming because “I guarantee / There are no sharks,” while a giant octopus lurks just below the surface, unbeknownst to her. “Deaf Donald” incorporates drawings of a child saying “I love you” in American Sign Language. His friend, Sue, not understanding him, grows frustrated and walks out of his life forever—one of the book’s many poems on miscommunication and lost opportunities. The speaker of “Something Missing” rehashes his morning routine. “I remember I put on my socks, / I remember I put on my shoes,” he says, “Yet I feel there is something / I may have forgot— / What is it? What is it? . . ..” Next to the poem is a drawing of a man in suitcoat, tie, and jaunty cap—but no pants.
Many of the poems explore the imaginative possibilities in seemingly mundane objects, such as “Picture Puzzle Piece.” “One picture puzzle piece / Lyin’ on the sidewalk,” the poem begins. “One picture puzzle piece / Soakin’ in the rain. / It might be a button of blue / On the coat of the woman / Who lived in a shoe. / It might be a magical bean, / Or a fold in the red / Velvet robe of a queen.” We need only let our minds roam freely to create a whole out of a tantalizing part, and Silverstein’s poems encourage such creativity, like “Rock ‘N’ Roll Band,” with its motley crew of kids dreaming big: “If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band, / We’d travel all over the land. / We’d play and we’d sing and wear spangly things, / If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band.” No matter that “we ain’t no rock ‘n’ roll band, / We’re just seven kids in the sand / With homemade guitars and pails and jars / And drums of potato chip cans”—they’re having a ball being noisy and exuberant. A tiny lighthouse and sailboat shimmer in the distance behind them. Such details enliven every page.
“Put Something In” strikes a similar chord as “Rock ‘N’ Roll Band”: “Draw a crazy picture, / Write a nutty poem, / . . . Put something silly in the world / That ain’t been there before.” A few years ago, I began painting with watercolors and drawing with colored pencils, new endeavors for me spurred by a book arts course I took at the college where I used to teach. In addition to our class projects, our professor, Daniel—my colleague and friend—gave us weekly assignments involving painting, drawing, and collaging. I took to it instantly, but I wasn’t very good, I feared. Early in the semester, we went outside with our scratchbooks, behind the art building, and were told to have fun—for two hours—with chalk, spray paint, charcoal nubs, bricks, and the bits of the natural world within reach, like twigs, leaves, dirt, and rocks. I stood there looking around, feeling bewildered and intimidated. The undergrads dived right in. They sat cross-legged on the ground. They sprayed their hands with paint and made prints and swirls and lines on their books’ clean white pages. They drew, glued, and collaged. I’m pretty sure matches were lit. By the end of class, my own book’s first few pages reflected a haphazard, but not half-hearted, effort at creativity. I got into the spirit of things but fell flat when it came to creating anything special.
*****
Once I bought watercolors and colored pencils, I began to stretch my wings a bit. Even then, though, I struggled with self-consciousness. Although I don’t particularly care for representational art, I wouldn’t paint or draw unless I had an object, or a picture of something, right in front of me. I would pick up a pencil and draw and erase, draw and erase. Knowing that Daniel would be collecting our scratchbooks a couple of times during the semester, I would imagine him looking at my pages over my shoulder (something he never would have done), not unlike the way Virginia Woolf imagines the Angel in the House—that Victorian-era phantom demanding that women write in deference to patriarchal expectations—in her 1931 lecture-turned-essay, “Professions for Women.” Attempting one night to draw Branwell Brontë’s painting of his sisters, I kept flubbing it. I finally scribbled it out and wrote, “Not my night. Can’t draw for shit.” Later, after we had turned in our books and then got them back, I saw that Daniel had written a note next to mine: “You’re listening to the wrong voice.” His overall comment on my paintings and drawings: “Play, play, play!”
Indeed, Silverstein’s poem “Put Something In” encourages us to adopt a more childlike, less inhibited frame of mind and to just enjoy the process. Along with creativity, we’re reminded to value individuality above material possessions and certainly above our own vanity, sentiments expressed in “Outside or Underneath?” Two characters, Bob and Jack, take pains with their appearance. For Bob, it’s a snazzy suit. For Jack, it’s quality underwear. But “Tom bought a flute and a box of crayons, / Some bread and cheese and a golden pear. / And as for his suit or his underwear / He doesn’t think much about them . . . or care.” Who wouldn’t prefer to be Tom—confident, creative, and carefree—rather than the smug and preoccupied Bob and Jack?
Overall, the poems in A Light in the Attic raise a lump in my throat that surely didn’t arise when I read them as a child. How did I interpret “Signals” at age twelve? I don’t remember. But now, as an adult settled firmly into routine, the poem poses a hard-hitting question: “When the light is green you go. / When the light is red you stop. / But what do you do / When the light turns blue / With orange and lavender spots?” Indeed, what do you do when the unexpected occurs? When something unfamiliar crosses or blocks your path? Do you freeze? Do you cower? Do you step off the curb and cross the street regardless? Do you welcome this shake-up to the familiar rhythms of daily life, or do you turn around and go home?
“Magic Carpet” culminates in a similar query. “You have a magic carpet” that can go anywhere. You only have to tell it where to go and what to do. “So will you let it take you / Where you’ve never been before, / Or will you buy some drapes to match / And use it / On your / Floor?” To my dismay, I’ve put the magic carpet on the floor many times. Yet I love to travel and have flown on that carpet as well—to England and Ireland, to loved ones in Seattle, to cherished family vacation sites in Massachusetts. My husband and I recently renewed our passports, and we have a long list of places we want to go post-pandemic. “Magic Carpet” nudges us to go for it—not just to travel but also to seize opportunities whenever or wherever they may arise, or better yet, create them ourselves and refuse to accept the mundane. Such a message evokes Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day,” with its speaker reveling in the grace and beauty of the natural world, and with its piercing final lines: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life?”
*****
This question permeates A Light in the Attic, with its parade of children, adults, and creatures contending with fear, insecurity, vulnerability, and regret. The voice of “Never” laments risks not taken. “I’ve never roped a Brahma bull, / I’ve never fought a duel, / I’ve never crossed the desert / On a lop-eared, swayback mule.” Never mind that such adventures aren’t feasible in the first place—at least not to most people. “Sometimes I get so depressed / ‘Bout what I haven’t done,” the speaker states. Who among us hasn’t experienced a similar sense of loss or regret? Silverstein captures such sentiments again in “Fear,” in which “Barnabus Browning / Was scared of drowning, / So he never would swim / Or get into a boat / Or take a bath / Or cross a moat.” Instead of venturing out and living his life, he sequesters himself at home, ultimately crying so many tears “That they filled up the room / And he drowned.” Lost opportunities also feature in “The Toad and the Kangaroo” as the eponymous characters delight in encountering one another and make plans for getting married and having a child endowed with their unique characteristics. They can’t agree on what to name it, however—Toadaroo or Kangaroad, Rangatoo, or Kangaree—until “the Toad had no more to say, / And the Kangaroo just hopped away. / And they never married or had a child / That could jump a mountain or hop a mile. / What a loss—what a shame— / Just ‘cause they couldn’t agree on a name.”
Silverstein’s poems consider the myriad ways we hinder ourselves. “Whatif” presents the gremlins who emerge at night to plague us: “Last night, while I lay thinking here / Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear / And pranced and partied all night long / And sang their same old Whatif song: / Whatif I’m dumb in school? / Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool? / Whatif I get beat up? / Whatif there’s poison in my cup?” The fears cascade, one after another: parents divorcing, the onset of war, failure, sickness, and death. Morning brings a brighter outlook, but without fail, “The nightime Whatifs strike again!” Turning to this page in the book, I was startled to see a small checkmark in blue ink in the upper left-hand corner. I must have put it there. What does it mean? That at twelve years old, I was already experiencing the nightly parade of Whatifs? That some of the fears listed were my own? “Whatif I flunk that test? . . . Whatif I tear my pants? / Whatif I never learn to dance?” What if I fight with my friends, don’t have the right clothes, get bullied or teased? Was I relieved to read this poem and learn that others were also lying awake worried at night? Or was I terrified at the poem’s conclusion and the promise of more whatifs to come?
There’s another small blue checkmark next to “The Little Boy and the Old Man,” who find they have much in common: “Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’ / Said the little old man, ‘I do that too.’” They wet their pants, they cry, “‘But worst of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems / Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’ / And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand. / ‘I know what you mean,’ said the little old man.” Even at twelve, it seems, I was struck by the poignancy of this poem. The fearful child, whispering his deepest secrets. The resigned old man, laughing and nodding to ease the boy’s anxieties. Is he the child’s grandfather? Is he an old man on a park bench whom the child decides to confide in? It doesn’t really matter how they found each other, just that they did. A question looms, though. Which is worse: experiencing confusion, fear, and loneliness for the first time or growing so accustomed to them, you can’t imagine things any other way? The poem ends with the old man’s loving gesture, and a friendship blossoms between two lonely souls.
*****
Perhaps most distressing to my adult sensibilities is “Cloony the Clown,” who suffers the ironic misfortune of being extremely unfunny. “His shoes were too big and his hat was too small, / But he just wasn’t, just wasn’t funny at all.” He pulls out all the stops—“a trombone to play loud silly tunes” and “a green dog and a thousand balloons”—but his props and pratfalls only elicit tears, sighs, and anger from his audience. “One day he said, ‘I’ll tell this town / How it feels to be an unfunny clown.’ / And he told them all why he looked so sad, / And he told them all why he felt so bad. / . . . Did everyone cry? Oh no, no, no, / They laughed until they shook the trees / With ‘Hah-Hah-Hahs’ and ‘Hee-Hee-Hees.’” Their laughter spreads far and wide, “While Cloony stood in the circus tent, / With his head drooped low and his shoulders bent. / And he said, ‘THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT— / I’M FUNNY JUST BY ACCIDENT.’ / And while the world laughed outside, / Cloony the Clown sat down and cried.” This poem terrifies me. What could be more appalling than finally mustering the courage to speak your truth only to be utterly misunderstood?
In another dimension, “Cloony the Clown” could be the prototype for T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as Prufrock convinces himself of the doomed nature of any attempts at communication. At least Cloony tries to explain how he feels in the hopes that he might be better understood. Prufrock doesn’t even try, foreseeing only humiliation and defeat. “Then how should I begin?” he asks, “And how should I presume?” People will snicker and gossip. They’ll mock his clothes, his thinning hair, his scrawny limbs. They’ll make assumptions about him. They’ll pin him to the wall like a wiggling, struggling bug. Two people speaking to each other, he believes, will only come to ruin. “Would it have been worth while,” he asks, “To have bitten off the matter with a smile, / To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it towards some overwhelming question, / To say, ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’— / If one, settling a pillow by her head / Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all; / That is not it, at all.’” So he becomes bashful, tentative, Hamlet’s kindred spirit in his indecisiveness. Prufrock leads a bleak, circumscribed life, “measuring out [his] life in coffee spoons” and not daring to eat a peach—images tailor-made for Silverstein drawings.
Silverstein’s thematic reach knowns no bounds. “Peckin” shows a bedraggled woodpecker pecking a plastic tree because there are no more real ones—a prescient depiction of environmental devastation. “Zebra Question” points to the futility of dichotomies and seeking easy answers to complex questions. “I asked the zebra,” a boy says, “Are you black with white stripes? / Or white with black stripes? / And the zebra asked me, / Are you good with bad habits? / Or are you bad with good habits?” and so on, the child and zebra engaging in an angry face-off. “Gooloo” depicts a flying, crying bird living a frustrating, impossible life: “The Gooloo bird / She has no feet, / She cannot walk / Upon the street. / She cannot build / Herself a nest, / She cannot land / And take a rest.” I’m unable to recapture how I must have felt reading these poems as a child. I’m sure I loved the playfulness of some, while others must have disturbed me, with their one-two punch of distressing words and images. I appreciate Silverstein’s respect for children, presenting them with a vast range of complex experiences and emotions.
I’m certain my mother rather than my father picked this book out for me. It simply wouldn’t have been on his radar. But I doubt she read any of the poems before wrapping it. She might have paged through it a bit and skimmed a few lines here and there, but probably no more than that. She just wanted me to get to know and enjoy poetry, which I did. Then, the book sat on a shelf unread for decades, relegated to my small collection of “children’s books.” Now I know better and will turn to Silverstein for the thrill of the rhyme, the clever blending of word and image, and a broad emotional landscape whose terrain I’m still exploring.