Zibby chats with award-winning poet Edward Hirsch about his memoir, MY CHILDHOOD IN PIECES: A Standup Comedy, where dark comic microbursts of prose relate a childhood in an aspiring middle-class Jewish family in the 50s and 60s. Edward discusses the book’s innovative structure—told in punchy, titled snippets that blend humor and heartbreak—and how it allowed him to unpack long-buried memories of a complex, often painful childhood. He reflects on memory, identity, and growing up with sharp-tongued parents and blended family dynamics, and then delves into how comedy and poetry became tools of survival and storytelling.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Edward. Congratulations on My Childhood In Pieces, a standup comedy. Congrats. 

Edward: Thank you. Thrilled to be with you. 

Zibby: Oh, okay. Talk to me first about the unique way that you told this story in little bits and how, what the whole story ended up being about.

Edward: I started out just by writing down things that my parents said to me sort of as they, they were just things they said, zingers really, that they gave me, but I realized that they were structured like jokes and the very first one that I wrote was I called a conversation with my mother. My mother was stirring soup at the stove, and I said, you know, you really shouldn't make fun of me. You're my mother. And she said, Don't be so sure, kid. And they're so harsh and funny. And I started just writing them down because that's all, I'm not sure why, but they're, I guess maybe 'cause they're gone now and this kind of style is gone. And I discovered that I could structure my own statements and stories and anecdotes in the same way, but not just quoting them. And this enabled me to start opening up parts of my childhood that I had never written about. And, um, I've discovered that these microbursts with a title, these mini crow's pieces had a lot of punch, and they also gave me a lot of flexibility in telling a story. And over time I realized that not all of them needed to be funny. They all needed to have a punch. 

Zibby: So through these short snippets and scenes, you end up giving us a depiction of a life that at the end you say. Your sister views it as traumatic, and it never occurred to you to think of it that way. Tell me more about that. 

Edward: I guess this is temperamental. I mean, I have two sisters, but one of them, my sister Arlene, and I went through everything together in our early childhood. The, the acknowledgement that you're talking about is that she went through psychoanalysis, so she remembers everything, but she doesn't, she doesn't think of it as funny and so. When I started writing this book, we were talking all the time and she'd often say, well, this just isn't funny. And I go, well, I can make it funny. And that was sort of the just thing that went on. But she's immensely helpful 'cause she remembers. She remembers everything. So this is a sort of, this is temperamental, but it's also a strategy of different ways of coping. I do say she thought it was funny too. I did. I did say that her way was more expensive, requiring psychoanalysis.

Zibby: So your book basically takes us through your parents as sort of teenagers to you and you become close to their same age as when we start the book and you're going off to college and sort of saying goodbye to the childhood era, even though we kind of know childhood extends beyond that now. But give us a quick preview. What happened after the book ended from like what's happened since the book ended to now in, you know, in your life? 

Edward: Well, the book ends. I just arbitrarily just ended it when I went off to college. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: Because that seemed like one end to childhood. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: Um, and the last piece is called Childhood was Gone.

Zibby: Right. 

Edward: And I, I was, I went off to Grinnell College and then I went to Grinnell College and at Grinnell College where I played football. I also became serious about writing poetry. 

Zibby: Mhm. 

Edward: There were sort of hints, I call, I think of them as sort of breadcrumbs, sort of leading you the way sort of hints towards my future vocation. 'Cause I started writing poetry in high school, but I certainly didn't think of myself as a poet. But in college I got serious about studying poetry and becoming a poet. So I did that and then I started winning fellowships and I went to graduate school and got a PhD. I started teaching at Wayne State University. 

I published my first book and I was kind of on my way. And I guess the only other thing I'd add to this was at some point I also began writing about poetry and found another part of my vocation, which was part of it was writing poetry. Part of it was teaching poetry, and then part of it was advocating for poetry.

Zibby: Do you view this book in a way as poetry in these short segments? 

Edward: I'd like to sell some copies. No. So I'm gonna say,..

Zibby: So no.

Edward: I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say no. I'd say my editor said it's poetry adjacent. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Edward: And I'd say it's poetry adjacent. That is, it's really not poetry, but it is. There are things that poems have in common with standup jokes, and that's that they have a turn and that, that's the thing that my, the jokes have, and that's the thing that poems often have.

What Italian poets in the Romans call the Volta or turn. And so there are ways that jokes are like poems and in terms of the compression of language, this is like poetry, but it's, it's really pro, it's really prose. 

Zibby: Hmm. 

Edward: And it, it's. More flexible than poetry. I think in a sense it gave me access to a whole kind of vernacular experience that I just hadn't been able to capture in, in, in poetry. And I think that's what was so exciting about the method for me not being poetry, is that it enabled me to tell things and quote people and tell stories that I just hadn't been able to tell. In, in poetry itself. 

Zibby: And when you thought about accessing all the memories and all the scenes and all the stanzas or whatever, what piece of it kept driving you forward and saying like, yes, I have to tell the story? Was it your relationship with your father? Was it your stepfather? Was it your blended family? Was it your siblings? Was it all of it together? Like your mother, you know what? What pieces of it were you like, yes, yes, yes. This has to be down on paper. 

Edward: You're doing really well right there. 

Zibby: Okay, great. Great.

Edward: You're doing really well. I'd say part of it was capturing my mother. Her quirks. Um, part of it was capturing my father, my biological father, and his love for Jewish gangsters. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: And his wild sayings. I especially like the one, what's a co-signer? 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. Yes. 

Edward: Stuck with a pen. 

Zibby: Yes. A schmuck,.. 

Edward: Lots of it, lots of it,.. 

Zibby: With a pen. Yes. 

Edward: A lot of his harsh sayings. Um, also my grandparents. 

Zibby: Mhm. 

Edward: Um, and capturing the world that they came from. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: And I sort of, that was where I started and then my stepfather. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: Who adopted me. Um, and then I was worried that it would sort of fall off after that. But I found that this also became a way, as they became a little less important, I'd say.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: To me, as I became more of a person myself, this method also helped me to tell my own story. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: Basically. How someone becomes a poet. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: And how the, the traumas and stories of childhood wound you in, into poetry and how The difficult things that, that happened to me mixed with a sort of somewhat ordinary suburban high school experience of meeting girls and playing football and playing sports, and that mixed with this underlying, I guess, grief was the, was the shaping and of of me, and so I saw it as the making of a person. 

Zibby: Hmm. I love this moment when you were playing, I thought it was baseball, but I could be wrong with you, with Neil. And all of a sudden you, you call him dad and you're like, it took both of us by surprise. You're like,...

Edward: Yeah but.

Zibby: From then on I called him dad. Like, when my mom wasn't around. 

Edward: Yes. My, my stepfather. Uh, you know, we learned he was our father because my mother went and got married and then she came back. She said, you should not call him Uncle Kurt anymore. You should call him daddy. Kurt. That's how we knew. 

Zibby: Oh, not Neil. Sorry, what did I say? Neil? And it's Kurt. I'm sorry. 

Edward: Kurt. Yeah. 

Zibby: I always get names wrong. I'm so sorry. 

Edward: That's okay. Yeah, it was Kurt. 

Zibby: I had four letters in my head. I got the wrong four letters. Okay, keep going. 

Edward: It sticks with you because he said when he introduced himself, he said, my name is Kurt. That's Kurt with a K. Yes, he, we called him Uncle Kurt. We felt disloyal to our father and then he decided I was too much of a mama's boy and he should get me interested in sports. 

Zibby: Right 

Edward: And what you're talking about is how he took me to the batting cages and they were, it was pitching and I, I slammed one. Felt really good and he said good hits. I turned around and said, thanks, dad. Then we both looked shocked and then he said, I'm gonna make up, pick up the speed on the next one. And so slowly we started calling him First Daddy, Kurt. And then we started just calling him dad. And at first my biological father, we called him Dad, then we called him Daddy Ruby. And then eventually we just called him Ruby. Wow. So it was kind of a switch. 

Zibby: If you were to point out the most painful and the funniest moments. In the book, what would you say, where is the moment where you felt most exposed? 

Edward: I guess the rupture of our childhood was the court case where my father sued my mother over our last name.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: And I guess that was a fault line because of what happened. And certainly the most painful moment in our childhood was when. Our father lost the case, or we thought he lost the case and he screamed at us that we had betrayed him and we weren't his children anymore. That was certainly the most haunting break in my childhood and I'd never really been able to tell that story. And this method somehow enabled me to get back into telling the story. And I think that would be the crux of what sent my sister into psychoanalysis too. 'Cause it was just a tough, just a tough moment. 

Zibby: I'm sorry that that happened to you all. 

Edward: It happened and it, I'm glad to be able to tell this. I'm glad to be able to tell this story. It's not very funny, but the book is not meant to be entirely funny. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: The method became very flexible, I guess, and I felt excited by the way that. What are sometimes jokes then become just turns and then enable me to tell stories that weren't funny, but seemed consistent with the rest of the book.

Zibby: I love that. Well, I found the format highly innovative. You know it's crazy when you read so many books and you're like, oh, well why didn't anybody else do this? Right? Like, huh, the short sections and each one has a title and the titles are often funny. And then you know, a little bit of text and occasionally you get longer. There were like one or two sections. Like why did he decide to make these so much longer? I don't know. They could have been a couple sections. What was, I don't know. So anyway, I found that quite original. 

Edward: I'm glad you, I'm glad you felt that. 'cause I was very excited by the method. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Edward: Um, first I just started writing things down, but I found it incredibly flexible and amazed that no one had done it. It just felt very, like a very, to me, an original way to tell a story. 

Zibby: Yep. Me too. 

Edward: And I'd always, it's sort of trying to channel how you tell an anecdote or you tell a funny story as you know, from your family. We all have a lot of funny anecdotes from our family, family lore, I guess. And I figured out a way to channel those and tell them, and I felt very excited by them. Very excited by the the pop and the method. 

Zibby: Me too. Very cool. And you have a fabulous cover, by the way. Were you so excited when you saw it? 

Edward: Oh my God, I think the cover is so great. I, they had asked my opinion and I suggested cut up family photos and they go, yeah, that's very cliche. All memoirs do that. 

And then they came up, this is just the Canna art department. They came up with this, it looks like a movie screen from Chicago in the 1950s, like a drive-in movie. It's so witty. 

Zibby: It's so good. 

Edward: Yeah. 

Zibby: And a Skokie Elegy. I should have read that when I was reading the. 

Edward: Yes. It's a, it's a double subtitle, A standup comedy and a Skokie Elegy. 'Cause it really tries to be both things. 

Zibby: Yeah,.. 

Edward: It's both a, the method is standup, but it's also a portrait of a vanished world. 

Zibby: Yes. Wow. Well, thank you so much, Edward. This is so great to talk to you about having read it and understanding your whole family and your history and everything. So thank you for sharing it with the rest of us. I really appreciate it and I'm glad it was helpful for you. 

Edward: Thrilled by your great responsiveness. I really appreciate it. 

Zibby: My pleasure. Okay. Take care. 

Edward: Bye 

Zibby: Bye-Bye.