American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse

by John Hollander (Editor)

Irreverent, playful, and inventive, the American light verse of the past century offers a brimming feast of urbane pleasures. Bubbling over with engaging parodies, sparkling aphorisms, and wisecracking asides, the poems gathered here display a sure-footed handling of the poet’s art. The foremost practitioners of light verse “took delight not only in what they had to say but in their precise manner of saying it,” writes John Hollander in his introduction. “What makes it mean something is . . . the unique pleasure that poets and readers alike can take in that craft.”

The poets in this volume included journalists, playwrights, screenwriters, and also some of the greatest poets of the century. We have Frost, Eliot, Millay, and Cummings, Don Marquis’ free-verse tales of Archy and Mehitabel, Newman Levy’s comic twists on grand opera, Samuel Hoffenstein’s disenchanted parsing of romantic sentiment, Dorothy Parker’s bitter epigrams, Ogden Nash’s brilliantly funny exercises in irregular all are among the highlights from a century’s worth of poetic humor.

About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.

Genres: Poetry, Humor, Anthologies, Fiction, Adult

219 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2003

Reviews

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very enjoyable. The reason it's getting only 3 stars from me is that while half of the book contains hilarious and funny poems, half of the poems just elicited no response from me. So it's a mixed bag.

But overall I love good poetry and I love to laugh, so this would be (overall) a winner, in my mind.

It includes the work of Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Parker, e.e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.B. White, Ogden Nash, and Edward Gorey among many others. :)

Some Highlights:

EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE by Arthur Guiterman
The skeleton is hiding in the closet as it should,
The needle's in the haystack and the trees are in the wood,
The fly is in the ointment and the froth is on the beer,
The bee is in the bonnet and the flea is in the ear.

The meat is in the coconut, the cat is in the bag,
The dog is in the manger and the goat is on the crag,
The worm is in the apple and the clam is on the shore,
The birds are in the bushes and the wolf is at the door.

The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet by Guy Wetmore Carryl - which is too long to post here, but I recommend looking it up!

THE RICH MAN by Franklin P. Adams
THE rich man has his motor-car,
His country and his town estate.
He smokes a fifty-cent cigar
And jeers at Fate.

He frivols through the livelong day,
He knows not Poverty, her pinch.
His lot seems light, his heart seems gay;
He has a cinch.

Yet though my lamp burns low and dim,
Though I must slave for livelihood—
Think you that I would change with him?
You bet I would!

...

FRUSTRATION by Dorothy Parker
If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.

...

THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA by Helen Bevington
The Princess slept uneasily
Upon a small offending pea

And twenty mattresses that were
Between the vegetable and her.

Her royal person, rather plump,
was agitated by a lump

That we, more hardy, would have said
Was never bothersome in bed.

Some people mind, and she was one.
The simple moral is, my son,

Avoid a Princess, shun a palace,
And pick a wife more lean and callous.

...

Tl;dr - Despite some duds and some slogs, overall a charming book that's worth reading.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an anthology of American light verse, this presented a mixed bag. Some of the selections were fantastic, others not so much.

[Richard Subber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost 200 pages of little somethings, and many of them are droll, with offerings from Ambrose Bierce to George Starbuck, with a bit of Vachel Lindsay and Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dorothy Parker and such thrown in.

Maybe Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960) got it about right: “…Fickle is the heart of/Each immortal bard…” (in “Us Potes”).

Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

Every April I try to read some poetry for National Poetry Month. Based on its title, I selected this volume, American Wits. Wit is a pretty open term, but I was looking forward to a full-throated survey of wit and humor in verse throughout American history. Unfortunately, the editor chose to focus on what he referred to as "light verse" and did not stray very far from the first half of the 20th century. The editor seems to define "light verse" as early 20th century "inside joke" literary humor. The result is that most of the poems in this volume come off as extremely dated, not very witty, and certainly not funny. The volume is also very poorly annotated to be focused on such a specific time frame and form of humor. However, in the belief that everything has a silver lining, I will point out that there is a hefty offering of Dorothy Parker here.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often vow to read more poetry, but I rarely keep that vow for more than an afternoon. I picked this up because I thought "Light Verse" here might be a painless way of making poetry reading more of a habit. I couldn't have been more satisfied by what I found here. These are not (thank God) primarily humorous poems, but sharp-witted, unsentimental considerations of traditional poetic subjects like love and contemporary life, and poetry itself. Excepting the canonical Dorothy Parker, the selection was a useful combintaion of poets unfamiliar to me (Samuel Hoffenstein, Norman Levy) and unfamiliar poems by familiar poets (Auden, James Merrill).

[Todd Hoke · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is what the title claims. Names I expected & recognized (Ogden Nash, EB White, Dorothy Parker, etc), but also a bunch I'd never heard of. A sample couplet by X.J. Kennedy (who falls in the 2nd category):

"Sex Manual"
By the cold glow that lit my lover's eye
I could read what page eight had said to try.

My fatherinlaw like that one.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a so-so compilation of humorous poetry. Some of it is great and classic, of course, but some lost my attention quickly. Might be worth a look at if you're looking for a particular "silly" poem.

[Sheri Fresonke Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems from American poets from 1830-1930+. Most with a humorous bent but some just with odd topics. I loved Macavity the Mystery Cat and finding Cousin May experiencing termites and having e e Cummings start a poem the way to hump a cow.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the heck is wit? Well, I guess I know now. Like most anthologies of light verse or nonsense are pretty uneven. And this is no different. Honestly, beyond Carroll, Lear and Gilbert, most nonsense verse (my preferred term) ranges from mediocre to terrible. I’d add T.S. Eliot’s Practical Cats, an excellent piece of nonsense. This volume opened my eyes to Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash who I’d heard of but never read. Otherwise, meh.

This is mildly entertaining. There are better things to read.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This delightful collection of light verse features such stalwarts as Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker, but also, surprisingly, some of the heavy hitters, like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost … guaranteed to raise a smile …

[Jen Hamon · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some good ones in this collection, but overall I felt "meh". Too many of these seem like obscure inside jokes that I wasn't able to appreciate.

[Sharon Zink · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because I had to. Some of the poems were amusing. Many of them were incomprehensible.

[Mary Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

2024 Sealey Challenge, Book 8.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an anthology of light verse of 20th century American authors. Many of the authors in this anthology are writers of verse without being poets per se. Dorothy Parker is a good example of the writers whose work appear in this book. Her verse receives the largest amount of space in the book. She made her living as a journalist but was a very skilled writer of verse. There are poets whose work was selected but they are in the minority.
The editor points out that there is a difference between wit and humor like the difference between wisecracks and jokes. There is a good example set forth in the foreword by John Hollander, the editor. He uses the poem "Miniver Cheevy" by Edward Arlington Robinson. The poem is really somewhat depressing about someone who is born in the wrong time and cannot be happy in the modern world. The humor comes in stanza,
" Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it."
The way Hollander tells the story Ezra Pound and Robert Frost were in London reading the poem together. It was the fourth use of the word "thought" that emphasizes that all Miniver is ever going to do is think about his predicament that caused the two poets to fall down laughing together. This is a story I will always remember and also shows the value of the contributions of the editors in all of the Poet Project books.
One of my favorites is a verse satire of Carmen that I find very funny.
The writers often poke fun at themselves and others. While reading I spent more time chuckling than laughing. I read the book twice. The second time I got a better appreciation of the verse elements that provides a lot of the enjoyment. It is a book I can always reach for when live is overwhelming and I need to get an attitude adjustment.
The editor emphasizes that the authors made a serious craft of their work. The book is one of the American Poets Project series and upholds the standards of the Library of America editions. As mehitabel would say, wotthehell, wotthehell just read the book toujours gai.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy, I don't think I know enough about poetry - or particular poets - to understand the wit in most of these "witty" poems. I am familiar with many of the poets included in this compilation, and I am a fan of their work, but the majority of the poems, I found, I did not enjoy.

Poems from earlier poets probably went over my head, but many of the 20th century ones left me scratching my head. Even if I didn't necessarily get the humor, I didn't much care for the subject matter, the style, etc.

There was just one poem - and it wasn't even the whole poem - that I found pleasing to me. It was the poem "Blues for a Melodeon" by Phyllis McGinley. It had a very eloquent line - not even humorous, unless in a sad way that went:

'This is the house that I knew by heart./ Everything here seemed sound, immortal./ When did this delicate ruin start?'

Delicate ruin is such a good line. It got me. But that is the only bit, that tiny bit that I really liked. The rest was meh to the extreme (excluding some of the Ogden Nash; I do love Ogden Nash).

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book in a round-about way looking for more info about Edwin Arlington Robinson after confusing him with Edgar Lee Masters. This was one of the few books that carried his work. The collection of poems found here are clever and sharp, mostly highlighting the 20th century. The usual suspects appear: Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, Kenneth Koch whose riffs on William Carlos Williams are hilarious. But there are also a few from Robert Frost, E.B. White and W.H. Auden who seem less playful in the works I've read prior to this. The fun part of this is that many of the poems and poets skewer each other and famous people of the time. Cultural and literary references abound showing the writers to have a good pulse on their generation.

[Luiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a bit of absurd and children's poetry over the last few years and enjoyed it so i grabbed this form the library. It is what it says it is. Fun, light, a little bit sarcastic. Lots of little couplets that lead me to think people used to be funnier as a whole, now we rely on memes to share instead of coming up with our own interesting thoughts on current events.
Not sure why poets are so into cats. Interesting how reading one thing leads to another, so the poem on Schopenhauer was hilarious to me.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars, rounded up! This was a delight! I couldn’t put it down until I finished it! The poems within these pages took me back to my childhood and early adulthood, when my grandfather would recite humorous poems, eliciting smiles and laughs from family. I greatly appreciated the subtleties of humor and even satire. I admit to drawing a correlation between several of these poems and the Twitter roasting of modern times, and thus enjoying the book even more. I only wish it had been a longer anthology, with a few poems more suited for children.