Collected Nonsense and Light Verse (Methuen Humour Classic)

by G.K. Chesterton

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0413181707
• ISBN13: 9780413181701
• Release Date: March 1988
• Publisher: Arrow (A Division of Random House Group)
• Length: 177 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Notable Nonsense and Laudable Light Verse - Great Fun

The humorous poetry of G. K. Chesterton is great fun. I seem unable to let go of Collected Nonsense and Light Verse; I am continually re-reading sections and it may be a long time before I actually set it aside. This collection includes pure nonsense poetry (the poet W. H. Auden called it: ... some of the best pure nonsense verse in English), drinking and traveling songs, satirical verses with a humorous vein, parodies and comical ballads. I am thankful to Marie Smith for her careful selections and clever arrangement of Chesterton's delightfully humorous verse. Among my favorites is The Logical Vegetarian, an incisive argument that wine, sherry, and port are so very, very, vegetarian. Despite the title, A Ballade of Suicide is hopeful and reassuring: "I think I will not hang myself today" is its memorable refrain. The Oneness of the Philosopher with Nature is enjoyable nonsense poetry. The longest title for a poem is undoubtedly the following: Irresponsible Outbreak of One Who, Having Completed a Book of Enormous Length on the Poet Chaucer, Feels Himself Freed from all Bonds of Intellectual Self-Respect and Proposes to do no Work for an Indefinite Period. I also enjoyed the poem titled Plakkopytrixophylisperambulantiobaxtrix, a twenty minute holiday from writing fiction. The reader new to Chesterton's light verse is most likely unaware of greybeards, clerihews, and envois. Greybeards at Play is Chesterton's earliest published poetry and is accompanied by the author's comical illustrations. G. K. Chesterton and his close friends - E. C. Bentley, Maurice Baring, and Hilaire Belloc - playfully composed short biographical verses, named clerihews after the middle name of E. C. Bentley. They likewise created envois, short concluding stanzas added to ballads, in this case as a comical postscripts.