Joseph T. Thomas Jr.'s Lecture, "A Long Talk on Shel Silverstein's Short Plays"

On October 3, 2018, the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature kicked off the fall semester with a talk given by San Diego State’s own Dr. Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the NCSCL. Dr. Thomas specializes in poetry and innovation writing for children and adults. He’s especially interested in the points of connection and overlap between innovation and experimental writing for adult and children’s literature. Along with an abundance of encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and essays, Dr. Thomas is the author of the Poetry’s Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children’s Poetry, Strong Measures, “Reappraising Uncle Shelby.” He’s currently writing “Aesthetics” a chapter for the second edition of Keywords in Children’s Literature & Culture, “BreakBeat and the New Auditory Avant-garde—for Childen! (Or, that New-fangled Noise the Kids Are All Going on about)” a chapter in The Companion to Children’s Literature.


Thomas’s audience may have come anticipating a talk about Shel Silverstein’s playfully rhythmic children’s poetry. According to some in the audience, they came because they remembered enjoying A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and The Giving Tree. Before seeing flyers about the event, they were not aware of Silverstein’s plays, so they attended out of curiosity.


Thomas begins his talk by confirming what much of the audience knew to be true already: “Shel Silverstein’s poems for the most part are intended for children.” Thomas moves on to differentiate Shel Silverstein’s poetry and songs from his plays. He says, “Unlike his short plays, the songs for adults which treat adult subjects like sex and violence with humor and candor often involving course vulgar language and explicit depictions of all manner of taboos. His children’s poetry skirts more adult content, especially when taken at face value.” Thomas’s talk examines Silverstein plays to reveal the “queer critique of our dominant heterosexist institutions and ideologies. To illustrate his point, Thomas introduces his audience to Silverstein’s short play Hamlet, “a monologue in verse,” starring Melvin Van Peebles along with The Devil and Billy Markham. Thomas’s reads from and explicates scenes from various short pieces in order to point to Shel Silverstein’s commentary on and “Bohemian resistance to bourgeois institutions” that historically plague people in America.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.
You can also follow Dr. Thomas on Twitter @josephsdsu

-K. Taylor