Edward Hirsch, MY CHILDHOOD IN PIECES: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive
0:24.0	look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't
0:29.3	have to.
0:30.3	Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day.
0:36.2	For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens.
0:44.6	Edward Hirsch is the author of My Childhood in Pieces, a stand-up comedy, a Skokie elegy.
0:50.7	Edward Hirsch is a MacArthur Fellow and has published nine previous books of poetry,
0:54.8	including The Living Fire, New and Selected Poems, and Gabriel, a poem, a book-length elegy for his son.
1:01.2	He has also published seven books of prose, among them How to Read a Poem, and Fall in Love with Poetry, a National Bestseller, and 100 Poems to Break Your Heart.
1:10.1	He has received numerous prizes,
1:12.2	including the National Book Critics Circle Award. A longtime teacher at Wayne State University
1:17.2	and in the creative writing program at the University of Houston, Hirsch is now president
1:21.4	of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Brooklyn. Welcome, Edward.
1:27.0	Congratulations on My Childhood in Pieces, a stand-up comedy. Congrats.
1:32.6	Thank you. Thrill to be with you.
1:34.3	Oh, okay. Talk to me first about the unique way that you told this story in little bits
1:40.1	and how, what the whole story ended up being about.
1:43.9	I started out just by writing down things that my parents said to me, sort of as,
1:49.5	they were just things they said, zingers really, that they gave me, but I realized that they
1:53.9	were structured like jokes.
1:55.8	And the very first one that I wrote was, I called a conversation with my mother.
2:00.4	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. They're so harsh and funny. And I started just writing them down because it's all, I'm not sure why, but they're,
	...

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