A POET’S REFLECTIONS

Edward Hirsch crafts memories of familial and suburban life into a funny elegy to growing up in Skokie.

Edward Hirsch’s most recent book, My Childhood in Pieces: A Skokie Elegy, A Stand-Up Comedy, brings the New York-based award-winning poet, prolific author, and since 2003, President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, back home to the people and the place where he grew up. It’s a memoir written unlike any other; individually titled stanzas, each a short story or “microburst” as Hirsch calls it, read like pictures of painted prose in a family photo album. The method is as unconventional as his coming-of-age, both then and now, for here he emerges again with a new accolade to add to his illustrious career credits: comedian.

At Grinnell College, he was an all-star athlete who played football and baseball and majored in English. From there he went on to a Ph.D. in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania and professorships at Wayne State University and the University of Houston. Over the course of his career, Hirsch has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and published more than a dozen books of and about poetry, including Gabriel: A Poem, for his son, and How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry, which became a national bestseller.

Early on, he was captivated by poetry and writing gave him a respite from the highs and lows of youth. It was also a bond that he shared with his late grandfather. “After my grandfather’s funeral, I wandered down to the basement and picked an anthology off the shelf. I found a poem called Spellbound. I fell under its spell. The author’s name was not included. I decided my grandfather must have written it. There was something he was trying to tell me.” A few years later, when Hirsch studied English poetry and re-read the same work, he learned the author was in fact Emily Brontë. Of the revelation, he recalls, “I was spellbound all over again, but I was also confused. Who was trying to reach me?”

Born just a year apart, Hirsch and his sister Arlene were “thick as thieves” as kids. In the dedication of the book to “Lenie,” her nickname, Hirsch writes, “We lived through everything together. We share a sense of humor and a history. She remembers our childhood as traumatic. I prefer to recall it otherwise. Her way was more expensive. It required psychoanalysis.” From their high school sweetheart parents’ early marriage, subsequent divorce, and custody battle that followed, to remarriages, new last names, and new siblings, it was an upbringing filled with multi-generational characters and often mass chaos.

Their family was part of the great migration from the city to the suburbs happening across America in the late 1950s/early 60s, and more specifically, those looking to create a Jewish community and culture post-World War II. The establishment of a town called Skokie offered such an opportunity. While some of the old local haunts will be most familiar to baby boomers—New York Bagel and Bialy on Touhy Avenue, Jack’s Restaurant, the Purple Hotel, and the building of the Edens Expressway to accommodate a Mad Men-era commute—Hirsch’s reflections are universal and inspiring for adults of all ages to look back and smile.

He says that he always wanted to write something funny. “I think that my parents would really like the style I chose, their quips and jokes, and the fact that I actually listened to them!” he laughs, “But it’s a mixed bag, for me it was liberating, and I hope it will trigger a lot of people’s childhood memories.”

For more information, visit edwardhirsch.com. Copies of My Childhood in Pieces (Alfred A. Knopf) are available for purchase at both The Book Stall in Winnetka and The Lake Forest Book Store.