Impertinent Poems

“You don’t buy poetry. (Neither do I.)” Edmund Vance Cooke begins by accusing his reader—and himself—of neglect, then asks whether the poets on the shelf are anything more than mummies.

In the early twentieth century, when electric light is displacing the “celestial fire” and Pegasus is “trolleyized,” Cooke takes aim at the habits of readers who praise the dead poets but overlook the living. His poems turn that brisk, teasing eye on everyday vanities: the boast that comes before a fall, the compliment that isn’t quite honest, the schemes that promise sudden riches. Beneath the jokes, he asks what it takes to meet ordinary life with courage and grace. Can a poet scold you into reading poetry—and make you laugh while he does it?

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