Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich: A Poem for Saturday
Can I just say that in case we are ever tempted to think poetry has to be dry, or serious, or difficult, or intense, or intellectual, or any of the other stuff that usually puts us non-poetry folks off poetry before we actually read any…. Can I just say thank God for Shel Silverstein?
Author of The Giving Tree and so many other stories and poems for children and adults, Silverstein reminds us that poetry, at its best, takes a definite number of words and uses them to remind us of the infinite possibilities inherent in language, imagination, and life. Note here – how can you miss it; that’s part of the joke – how Silverstein tries to slip the hippopotamus innocuously into the recipe as just one more ingredient. But, yes, I suppose if you could do that the hard part really would be taking a bite.
I hope your weekend has a bit of Silverstein’s sly playfulness about it. After all, we’re in April, the month of changing climates, showers, and elusive glimpses of the summer to be. What could be better than a sandwich made of bread and cake and, oh, don’t forget the hippopotamus.
“Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich”
A hippo sandwich is easy to make.
All you do is simply take
One slice of bread,
One slice of cake,
Some mayonnaise
One onion ring,
One hippopotamus
One piece of string,
A dash of pepper —
That ought to do it.
And now comes the problem…
Biting into it!
Shel Silverstein, from Where the Sidewalk Ends, 1974
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