The DWJ Project: “A Slice of Life” (poem)

Disabled

Endless thanks to carbonel, who saved me from my own obsessive-compulsiveness and sent me the text of this poem in time for the grand finale of this project tomorrow.

. . . of course, there isn’t a lot to say about it. “A Slice of Life” is a forty-line poem (forty-five if you count the days) from the viewpoint of a schoolchild who’s convinced the headmaster has been killed and is being served up piecemeal for lunch throughout the week. It made me think of Shel Silverstein, and also of “Sideways Stories from Wayside School” — does anybody else remember that series?

(Edited to add: I googled to find out why I had the name “Solomon Grundy” in my head — the headmaster is Mr. Grundy — and discovered the poem was clearly inspired by this nursery rhyme.)

It was published in the poetry anthology Now We Are Sick, edited by Neil Gaiman and Stephen Jones. I look forward to seeing what else is in there, once my copy arrives.

0 Responses to “The DWJ Project: “A Slice of Life” (poem)”

  1. Anonymous

    I’m glad I could help. I picked up a copy of the anthology at (IIRC) Wiscon last year when Greg was selling them for something un-pass-up-able like $1 each.

    (total pedantry alert) Only 40 lines, really. I couldn’t figure out the HTML to emulate the typography in the original, but in those, the day of the week is to the left, and the text of each verse is indented to the right. So the day of the week shares the same line with the first line of each verse.

  2. Marie Brennan

    40 lines it is, then. 🙂 And thank you again!

  3. starlady38

    oh god, the Wayside School! I read a lot of them and have retained almost nothing.

  4. Anonymous

    Yeah, I don’t remember much. But the vibe is still in my head.

    Man, I’m kind of tempted to see if the library has those books . . . or maybe I should stay away. I dunno. Some things revisit well; others do not.

Comments are closed.