I'd never heard of him before, but am now intrigued to find out more. Thanks, Beeps.

"Now, here's my plan...."

He wrote a book of popular poems that I had to read in grade school (everyone liked his illustrations) so I was surprised to find he had a riotously obscene folk-poem-story thing for Playboy back in the day. He also wrote "A Boy Named Sue" for Johnny Cash.

also

:. In fact, Silverstein narrowly avoided the world’s first cartoon-related court martial over a comic strip that seemed to imply officers were dressing their families in stolen uniforms

Shel Silverstein is high up on my list of people I'm sorry I never met. He wrote a BUNCH of songs for rock and country artists in the '70s, including The Irish Rovers' "The Unicorn", Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show's best songs ("Sylvia's Mother" and "The Cover of the Rolling Stone"), Maryanne Faithfull's "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan", Loretta Lynn's country-culture-clashing "One's on the Way", Tompall Glazer's tongue-wedged-deeply-in-cheek "Put Another Log on the Fire (The Male Chauvinist's National Anthem)" and several other Johnny Cash goodies besides "A Boy Named Sue". In 1973, prompted by Dr. Demento playing "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout (Would Not Take the Garbage Out)", I acquired his "Freaking at the Freakers Ball" album and got my mind seriously blown. (My inability to get any of the GOOD songs played on my college radio station was a key motivator for me to change colleges.) He had a Sure Hit Songwriter's Pen. A true genius on multiple levels.