American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Light verse, editor Hollander says, is a phenomenon of a cultural moment that has passed. "The writers gathered here came to literate maturity at a time when the ability to read and write accentual-syllabic verse was part of what it meant to be literate." The rise of free verse in American literature and, more important, literature classes exiled light verse from daily newspapers--in which columnists Franklin P. Adams and Don Marquis (who managed to write light free verse) published it--to specialty micro-magazines. So the youngest poet Hollander samples is 73! That poet, George Starbuck, is as funny, as culturally literate, and as willing to make light of it as any others in the book. (Try to be frivolous about the things that matter and the powers that be today--and it's PC court for you, buster!) The still-glimmering stars of light verse include Dorothy Parker, of course, who breaks your heart as well as your sobriety with her wit and acerbity; the nonpareil Ogden Nash; and Phyllis McGinley. But opera-flouting Norman Levy, love-deflating Samuel Hoffenstein, poetic chestnut-parodying Morris Bishop--these and other now-obscure names demand to be lit anew, to be read. Ray Olson
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Book Description
Distinguished poet and critic John Hollander offers, for the first time ever, a buoyant guided tour of American light verse-a tradition he delightfully pursues from Ambrose Bierce's sardonic The Devil's Dictionary quatrains to the latter-day comic inventions of Edward Gorey, Kenneth Koch, and James Merrill. Along the way, American Wits gathers a rich harvest of couplets, clerihews, epigrams, parodies, burlesques, and other forms of fractured verse. The varied and often surprising list of contributors includes Edwin Arlington Robinson, Don Marquis, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Morley, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ogden Nash, Phyllis McGinley, and Anthony Hecht.

About the Author
John Hollander has published eighteen books of poetry, including Picture Window (2003), as well as five books of criticism. He recently retired as Sterling Professor of English at Yale.


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Author Biography: John Hollander has published eighteen books of poetry, including Picture Window (2003), as well as five books of criticism. He recently retired as Sterling Professor of English at Yale.


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