From Richard Armour’s Writing Light Verse: “There is no end to the humorous and satirical verses that can be written by men about women, by women about men, or by the writer about his or her own sex, always pointing up the special foibles that make a comparison of the sexes so fascinating to writer and reader alike. The male light verse writers, such as Samuel Hoffenstein and Arthur Guiterman, have done very well. But the women, notably Dorothy Parker, Phyllis McGinley, Margaret Fishback, and Ethel Jacobson, have done even better. They seem to have a sharper eye — as well as a sharper pen.”

New at IWP Books: Margaret Fishback, 1937, One to a Customer

River, Stay ‘way from My Door

The world is crammed with superior souls,
 Embodying every virtue.
All of them aim at lofty goals,
 And nary a one would hurt you.
All of their ilk are good and kind,
 Magnanimous, noble people,
Who turn the thoughts of the mundane mind
 To the peak of a high church steeple.
Thousands of these exist who are
Honest and bright, and better by far
Than you and I. But the fact remains
That often they give us shooting pains.

Many’s the person I do not
 Hanker to see, although I
Am quick to acknowledge they have got
 Characters pure and snowy.
Many’s the mortal I admire
 But do not prefer to be with.
Many’s the man whom I aspire
 Not to live in a tree with.
I like so many, and yet it’s true
The ones that I want for pals are few —
A half a dozen or so, not more,
To slide with me down my cellar door.

The rest — well, I wish them luck and health
 And flagons of fine old brandy.
I wish them joy and I wish them wealth
 And the best assorted candy.
But what I wish the most to achieve,
 And what I persist in hoping,
Is that at length the herd may leave
 Me to my misanthroping.
For I am a hermit mean as mud.
My heart was nipped in the well-known bud.
And I want the people I want. And never
The rest, no matter how fine and clever.

From An Armoury of Light Verse (1964) by Richard Armour.

See Here

His friends can’t see what he sees in her,
 Nor hers, what she sees in him.
No, love isn’t blind — it’s those not in love
 Whose sights is so frightfully dim.

Election Results

An office-seeker, if defeated,
Finds his stock of friends depleted.

An office-seeker, if elected,
Has friends he’d not before suspected.

Birds of a Feather

Though disagreement and debate
And argument may stimulate

The self-contented, sluggish mind,
I must admit I am inclined,

Whenever possible, to be with
Those kindred souls whom I agree with.

Think of It

A new digital computer has been built that will think like a
man, even making human errors — News Item

Comes now a digital computer
Astute as man, but not astuter,
That thinks a complex problem through
Precisely as we humans do.

They’ve built such think machines before,
To do, and quick, some highbrow chore,
But never one whose thinking bordered
Upon the fuzzy and disordered,

One that grows tired, a second-rater
That puts things off till sometime later,
That tends to daydream, idly blinking,
And think up ways to keep from thinking.

We should, I guess, give praise to science
For making such a fine appliance,
Though I’m inclined to feel, somehow,
We’re overstocked on these things now.

New at IWP Books: Richard Armour, 1958, Nights with Armour. From the Preface: “The poems in this volume, the reader will doubtless note with satisfaction, are short. Most of them run to no more than eight or ten lines, and some of them barely walk. Because of their brevity, they can be recommended to persons who go to sleep as soon as their head hits the pillow. Even in that short interval it is possible to read a couplet or two, and if the reader fails to get through such a piece he will have missed comparatively little. On the other hand, persons who are afflicted with insomnia will also find the brevity of the poems useful, since they can vary things a little by counting poems instead of sheep. This is something that cannot be done with a volume containing only ‘Paradise Lost’ or ‘The Ring and the Book.'”

Adolescent

A mind? Yes, he
 Has one of those.
It comes, however,
 And it goes.

And if, when it
 Is called upon,
It mostly happens
 To be gone,

Don’t fret, don’t shout,
 Don’t curse the lack.
Just wait a while —
 It will be back.

Taking It Easy

When the day of complete
Automation comes,
We’ll put up our feet
And twiddle our thumbs.

But, far from serene,
We’ll say it’s just middling,
And want a machine
To take over the twiddling.

Debate

Convinced by Con,
Persuaded by Pro,
The pendulum mind
Swings to and fro,

Till cleared is the hall
And closed is the door,
When it comes to rest
Where it was before.

New at IWP Books: Richard Armour, 1954, Light Armour.

Lines for the Day After Elections

The sun still rises in the east,
The song of skylarks has not ceased,
The mountains stand, the seas are calm,
I hear no detonating bomb.

The banks are open, trains on time,
The morning paper’s rich with crime,
A stream of traffic fills the street,
The ground is firm beneath my feet.

No cataclysmic conflagration
As yet has swept our luckless nation.
No sign of doom have I detected,
Although my man was not elected.

So Many People Put Themselves into My Shoes That I Think I’ll Go Barefoot

My friend says not to worry,
 My friend pooh-poohs my fears,
His words are quite consoling,
 His optimism cheers.

This view unvexed, undaunted,
 How comforting it is…
He looks upon my worries
 The way I do at his.

New at IWP Books: Richard Armour, 1946, Leading With My Left (Introduction by Max Eastman).

State of Mind

Gray grow my hairs
 And bald grows my pate
From the state of affairs
 Of affairs of state.

Two Bad

Black marketeers are called up short
 And hotly deprecated
And when they’re caught, haled into court,
 Fined, or incarcerated.

All well and good. I’m nothing loath,
 Just so, with prices higher,
We don’t forget the fault’s due both
 To seller and to buyer.

Linguist

Byrnes Learns to Say “I Agree” and “No” in Russian. — Newspaper Headline

It would appear the Secretary
Has not a large vocabulary.
The range is great, that’s plainly seen,
But still, there’s not much in between.

He lacks the words for “maybe” and
“Perhaps,” and “on the other hand.”
He cannot say, in accents pure,
“That may well be, I’m not quite sure.”

With only “I agree” and “no”
With which to handle Uncle Joe,
With heads he wins and tails he loses,
A lot depends on which he chooses.

New at IWP Books: Richard Armour, 1963, The Medical Muse.

Nurse, Hand Me My Oil Can

Will automation do away
With doctors, also, some fine day?
Will patients then, when they are ill,
Just press a button for a pill?

Will metal monsters cut the skin
With scalpels, probe around within,
And having done what’s needed, then
Stitch up the patient once again?

If things should come to such a pass,
With doctors mostly steel or brass,
There should be little cause for rue,
For patients will be robots too.

New at IWP Books: Richard Armour, 1947, Writing Light Verse.

“There are books on how to do just about anything. You can find one on how to build a birdhouse, twirl a baton, win an argument, operate an abacus, remember names and faces, grow tuberous begonias, or play a shepherd’s pipe. There are books on how to live, how to love, and how to die.

“But, while there are plenty of books designed to make easy the writing of a novel, a play, a short story, or a serious poem, there is nothing precisely of the sort to help the writer of light verse. Perhaps, as will be pointed out later, this is because the writing of light verse is considered so easy that no help is necessary. Certainly it is not because few persons are interested in writing it. It is said that The Saturday Evening Posti> alone receives several thousand pieces of light verse each week — and prints about six. When it sells, light verse generally brings a higher rate of pay than serious poetry, for the obvious reason that it is more appealing to the mass of readers and is therefore used in magazines of the largest circulation. It is a popular type of filler, inserted here and there to supply a few lines of type when stories and articles fall a bit short of the bottom of the page. The demand for light verse is steadily increasing, and so also is the number of persons willing, if not ready, to meet the demand.

“Many have been misled by the apparent ease of writing light verse and have entered the lists with high hopes, only to withdraw, chagrined and perplexed, after the eighth or tenth rejection slip. Others have scored a few times, but have been unable to keep it up; or have achieved their success only in some local, small-paying publication. This book is intended to encourage all of these persons to intensify their efforts, and to give them guidance in writing about the right subjects in the right way and sending their product to the right markets. It is, frankly, another of the host of “How to –” books. As such, it is meant to be simple and practical, a stimulus to do and a help in the doing. If something faintly resembling literary criticism is occasionally involved, it is only because it behooves the writer of light verse to know the difference between bad and good, and between fair and first-rate. Nor can the psychology of editors and readers be wholly neglected.

“This is also a personal book…”

New at IWP Books: Richard Armour, 1950, For Partly Proud Parents (Introduction by Phyllis McGinley).

Raising the Question

When I grow vexed and weary
 From Junior’s ceaseless “Why?”
His morn-to-evening query
 About the earth and sky,

My nerves are nearly shattered,
 My patience flickers low,
But how my ego’s flattered
 To think he’d think I know!

Deflation

Sons and daughters
In their teens
Think their parents
Don’t know beans.

Which would not be
Hard to face
Were it not so
Oft the case.

One More

One more story,
One more game,
Then we’ll scamper —
So they claim.

One more giant,
One more jump,
Of to bed
They say they’ll hump….

One’s so few
It’s hardly any —
Strange one more
Can be so many!

From Phyllis McGinley’s A Short Walk to the Station.

About Children

By all the published facts in the case,
Children belong to the human race.

Equipped with consciousness, passions, pulse,
They even grow up and become adults.

So why’s the resemblance, moral or mental,
Of children to people so coincidental?

Upright out of primordial dens,
Homo walked and was sapiens.

But rare as leviathans or auks
Is — male or female — the child who walks.

He runs, he gallops, he crawls, he pounces,
Flies, leaps, stands on his head, or bounces,

Imitates snakes or the tiger stripèd
But seldom recalls he is labeled “Biped.”

Which man or woman have you set sights on
Who craves to slumber with all the lights on

Yet creeps away to a lampless nook
In order to pore on a comic book?

Why, if (according to A. Gesell)
The minds of children ring clear as a bell,

Does every question one asks a tot
Receive the similar answer — “What?”

And who ever started the baseless rumor
That any child has a sense of humor?

Children conceive of no jest that’s madder
Than Daddy falling from a ten-foot ladder.

Their fancies sway like jetsam and flotsam;
One minute they’re winsome, the next they’re swatsome.

While sweet their visages, soft their arts are,
Cold as a mermaiden’s kiss their hearts are;

They comprehend neither pity nor treason.
An hour to them is a three months’ season.

So who can say — this is just between us —
That children and we are a common genus,

When the selfsame nimbus is eerily worn
By a nymph, a child, and a unicorn?