Childhood Monsters

Maurice Sendak:
Every kid’s hero.

Sendak was the Bad Boy

of children’s literature,
notorious for a brawling
soul-deep, contrarianism.

Sendak had the audacity

to tell the truth: Kids
have a wilderness inside them,
a lush forest of untamed zeal.

The day the forest is razed,

the day kids become adults,
the world gains a few straight lines
a few neat corners.

The day the forest is razed,

the day kids become adults,
the world  loses a lot of its poetry,
a lot of its joy.

Childhood is a “monstrous confusion.”

Civilize it? Control It? Bring it to heal?
He let it off the leash. He gave it space,
He roamed the sumptuous imagination.

Maurice Sendak:

A great artist.

© 2012 Catherine Giordano

Maurice Sendak, the author of “Where the Wild Things Are,” “In the Night Kitchen” and close to 100 other books, died yesterday at the age of 83.