Franklin P. Adam's Views on Modern Poetry presented by Michael Gilleland American journalist and radio personality Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960) was a curmudgeon's curmudgeon. Old-fashioned even in his own day, his views are hopelessly out-of-date now. Here, for the delectation of fellow curmudgeons, are some witty barbs aimed at modern poets by Franklin P. Adams. They have lost none of their sting, and are as sharp and accurate today as they ever were. To a Vers Librist To the Neo-Pseudoists The Conservative Reader The Strawless Brick After Reading "The Waste Land" The Color School of Poetry Good Night, New York I Cannot Sing the Old Songs The Old Oaken Poet Home

To a Vers Librist

"Oh bard," I said, "your verse is free;
The shackles that encumber me,
The fetters that are my obsession,
Are never gyves to your expression.

"The fear of falsities in rhyme,
In metre, quantity, or time,
Is never yours; you sing along
Your unpremeditated song."

"Correct," the young vers librist said.
"Whatever pops into my head
I write, and have but one small fetter:
I start each line with a capital letter.

But rhyme and metre -- Ishkebibble! --
Are actually negligible.
I go ahead, like all my school,
Without a single silly rule."

Of rhyme I am so reverential
He made me feel inconsequential.
I shed some strongly saline tears
For bards I loved in younger years.

"If Keats had fallen for your fluff,"
I said, "he might have done good stuff.
If Burns had thrown his rhymes away,
His songs might still be sung to-day."

O bards of rhyme and metre free,
My gratitude goes out to ye
For all your deathless lines -- ahem!
Let's see now....What is one of them? 

To the Neo-Pseudoists

Poets and painters and sculptors,
  Ye of the Screeching schools,
Scorners of Art's conventions,
  Haters of bonds and rules,

Mockers of line and rhythm,
  Loathers of color and rhyme,
What of your new creations?
  What of the Test of Time?

Fetters no longer bind you,
  Ye of the New To-day,
But -- if a dolt may ask it --
  What have ye got to say?

Here is another question,
  Less of the head than heart:
Is the new stuff wonderful merely
  Because it is rotten art?

The Conservative Reader

In the days of old when rhymes were bold,
  And ballads held their sway,
The poems would swing like anything,
  And songs were brave and gay.

In olden times when verse had rhymes,
  And poetry had fetters,
Those were the days of roundelays
  And bards in love with letters.

I see no longer simple song,
  And lyric limitation.
"Damn everything," the moderns sing,
  "Including punctuation!"

"Let freedom ring!" the moderns sing.
  "Our verse is free and winging!"
It fails to fly, and rarely I
  Detect the sound of singing.

I don't object to intellect
  (I love the nth dimension),
But as a rule the modern school
  Is past my comprehension.

I like to read the rhymes unfreed!
  I crave 'em, I demand 'em.
Till death I'll fight for those who write
  So I can understand 'em.

The Strawless Brick

As I look out the window
  Precisely to my left,
Of thoughts, or old or novel,
  I am bereft.

There was a time when that would
  Have worried me a lot;
That was in the old days ....
  Now it does not.

Not even an emotion
  Have I to put in print.
A vague, a blurred impression,
  Or half a hint;

A spurious description
  Of what I think I see
May put me in the forefront
  Of poetry.

I see an apartment building,
  It's made of stone and bricks;
The windows are glass, it seems to me;
  The floors are six.

The apartment just across from me --
  Nobody seems to be in it --
But someone may come to the window
  Most any minute.

A taxicab is passing,
  And in the street five boys
Are making a good deal of
  Irritating noise.

It would be irritating
  To an old-fashioned bard,
But for us of the modern method
  Nothing is hard.

I remember, in the old days,
  I couldn't write for the noise
Made by inconsiderate
  Playing boys.

That was when I had to
  Seek the magic word.
How silly were the old days,
  And how absurd!

In the silly old days
  I'd have worked all day,
And I'd have felt obliged to have
  Something to say.

I can not sell the old songs
  I sold long years ago.
Well, let it not be said of me
  That I am slow.

As, looking out the window
  Precisely to my left,
Of thoughts, or old or novel,
  I am bereft.

After Reading "The Waste Land"

I read "The Waste Land" riding
Down in the subway last evening.
Darned good, swell stuff, I said at times,
But I like rhymes,
I'm a conservative goof,
Aloof
From the poems amorphous.
I went to the orfice.
Terrible, rotten stuff, I thought Eliot's poem.
"O the moon shown bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter."
That's his impression,
O the moon shines bright
On the daughter of Officer Porter
Is charming Kitty.
Gentle sir, my heart is frolicsome and free --
Hey, but he's doleful, willow, willow waly!
Why do I always sing that going up the escalator?
City Hall Park
After dark,
He loves me; he is here!
Fa la la la!
Fa la la la!
Thought for the ballade's refrain:
"Why should it get the Dial prize?"
The said Sir Kay the Seneschal
Nothing at all.
Tit willow, tit willow, tit willow
Blah        blah        blah.

The Color School of Poetry

My soul is red and yellow,
  And yours is green and blue,
And I am jetly violet,
  And pink, I think, is You.

My life is darkly orange,
  And yours is lightly green,
Sing hey! sing ho! for indigo!
Some poets write like this, but O
  I don't know what they mean --
      No, no,
I don't know what they mean.

Good Night, New York

And in some noisy room
A man is writing.
He is thinking of the days when Bryant wrote here,
And Poe,
And Stedman,
and N.P. Willis;
All of whom wrote in rhyme.
The man is writing in lines that begin with capital letters,
Therefore he is not e.e. cummings.
But nowadays paper is cheap
And ink is cheap
And ideas are cheap,
And a man can chop up prose and send it along to an editor,
And it's Strong Stuff,
Awkward, unpretty, and unromantic.
Because the old stuff was
Graceful, beautiful, and romantic.
But no longer. Nope.
Give me the lines that zoom and zip!
To hell with the songs that purl and tinkle!
A sap who sings in rhyme is a Rip
Van Winkle.

I Cannot Sing the Old Songs

I cannot sing the old songs,
  And even if I could,
I could not find a listener
  To say that they were good.

For poetry is modern,
  And poetry is "free,"
And poetry's "expression,"
  And Poetry is Me.

And poets all are busy,
  And poets have no time
To waste on words melodic,
  Or spend on silly rhyme.

For Poetry is freedom
  From metre's utter fetters,
And poetry is lines that don't
  Begin with capital letters.

And Poetry is emotion,
  And Poetry is scenes,
And Poetry is so earnest
  I don't know what it means.

But if it have a meaning,
  And it be rich in rhymes,
The silly sap who sings it
  Is far behind the times.

So I shall not sing the old songs,
  That erst I might have sung,
For I am of the people
  Professionally young.

And I cannot sing the old songs,
  For even if I could,
There would not be a listener
  To say that they were good.

The Old Oaken Poet

When I was young my pen and tongue
  Were slow, nor did I seek to speed them.
I labored hard to be a bard
  Whose lines were built that some might read them.

I'd put in days upon a phrase;
  I'd write, erase, and then demolish;
The perfect whole was then my goal;
  I'd pick and choose, I'd shine and polish.

Through half the night my verse I'd write.
  Only when flawless I'd o.k. it,
And when I'd done what I'd call one,
  It sounded swell, if I do say it.

But careful rhyme ain't worth the time.
  The midnight oil will burn and char you.
To beauty's quest you give the best
  Years of your life, and then where are you?

You're nowhere,
That's where you are --
Nowhere.

For you can kid free verse,
Or no verse,
As the stuff called free verse usually is.
Or Dreiserian verse,
   or e.e. cummings verse --
You can kid those art-forms all you like,
Though you can never kid them as much as I like.
I say
Repetitiously
You can kid them all you like,
And, as Gilbert said,
The interesting fact remains
That more people read stuff in this
Form (Form my four grandparents!)
Than in the rhymed way.

That is because
There are so many people who Never Read Poetry.
So they read these things and think they are reading poetry,
Especially if it has a little profanity,
Strained through a colander,
Adding a heaping cupful of obscenity
And sweeten to taste.

I am sated with it.

I am up to my neck in it,
That's where it gives me a pain.
But though I consider it food for the swine,
The editors
Buy it
At
So much
A
Line,
At so much a line!" says Echo, who is no fool.

And here's another lie:
These boys
And girls,
As the case may be,
And most of the time is,
Tell you
That this sort of stuff
Isn't as easy as it looks.
They lie.
If I were writing a play about newspaper men,
Instead of writing for a newspaper,
I'd tell you what variety of liar they are.
This stuff is easier than it looks,
And that's
Awful easy.

Even the conspicuously commonplace stuff,
With an occasional line of phony poetry,
Like
"The flowers smell kinder purty,
Like a angel's buttonhole bouquet."

It's tiresome even to write this
Kind
Of
Stuff.
Shifting the typewriter every second.

Come, O my pen, return again
  To labor on each verbal item.
Though none will see their charms but me,
  It is a lot of fun to write 'em.