Judge, 1909-11-13 · page 10 of 16
Judge — November 13, 1909 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **editorial content and satire** rather than political cartooning. The main section is a **humorous essay on poetry**, mocking both poets and editors. It uses exaggerated definitions ("soda-water composition") and jokes about poetry's impracticality—that readers don't need to understand it, that editors use it to fill pages, and that the best poets are wild, uncivilized "barbarians." The essay satirizes the literary establishment's pretensions. Below is a **dialect poem about Georgia crops**, celebrating babies as Georgia's greatest "crop"—likely mocking rural Southern boasting or census pride. The **"Writer's Ink" section** tracks magazine circulation rankings, with Cosmopolite Magazine claiming impressive growth. The editor's note admits they've artificially inflated readability by adding "blank spaces"—a self-aware joke about padding magazines with white space to appear fuller. The cartoon illustrations and sidebar joke about a woman engaged to Jack are minor decorative elements with unclear specific reference. Overall, this page satirizes **literary pretension, editorial dishonesty, and magazine circulation games**.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
POETRY. OETRY is soda-water composition, and comes higher and flies higher than aqua-pura prose. It is made by poets, who are not made, and consists of one theme and many words, usually flavored by 2ome sort of meter and charged with more or less imagination gas. Sometimes a poem explodes, and then the poet indulges in a flight of imagination. Poetry is of many kinds, such as lyrics, odes, blank verse and blankety-blank verse. The last is near-poetry complicated with tangled feet. Rhymes are not necessarily poems; they are not nec- essary at all, but some prefer rhyming to other forms of dissipation. You can cultivate a taste for poetry as you do olives, but the love of jingles and onions is an uncultivated taste. Poetry is sold to editors when they are not looking. It is used to fill out the page on which a story ends, and is read by the proof- reader and peuple who are doing penance for some grievous sin. It ia not necessary to understand poetry in order to read it. If you understood it, you probably wouldn't read it. It is believed that the best poetry is written by the untamed child of nature—the wild poet, so to speak. In fact, an eminent critic has maintained that only barbarians can write good poetry. This may explain why an editor becomes savage when a poet enters his office. He probably wishes to meet his wild-eyed visitor on his own jungle plane. If you wish to see a really and truly wild poet, seek out the bard who has written: FOLLOWING ‘THE BLAZED TRAIL. “ A red, red rose informs the world the spring we love is here,” “ Have you ever bagged a wildcat and finds, when printed, it reads: * Only one—she bagged me!” ‘* A red, red nose informs the world the thing we love is beer.’’ eeoncee A view of the enraged poet as he roars out his wrath will give BAAS SGGSt Chor you a vivid idea of what it would mean to hunt with Roosevelt in OU kin praise de crap ob cotton, a tilen Yy Wid its ‘leven million bales, teas _ wm KEKE. You kin brag aboot de money OLITICIANS never take a vacation, and, by the way, that is F’om de peach crap’s yearly sales; But dar’s one crap down in Georgy Dat’s de bigges’ crap ob all, An’ dat yields a reg’lah harves’ Summah, wintah, spring an’ fall. about the only thing they won’t take if they get a chance. You don’t know what crap is bigge Go ‘long, man, an’ tek yo'r rea’! Why, de baby crap, you rascal, Is de bigges’ an’ de bes’! Cotton crap—it jes’ can’t tech it, By its side de peach crap pales; Fo’ de crap ob Georgy babies Is de crap dat nevah fails! stuas x. puorm, A PAGE FROM 33 WRITER’S INK OCTEMBER READING The Really Interesting Reading Matter in the Various Magazines for Octember j somes LOOK WHERE WE ARE | ble tlon Anybody's 2 J Last month we were down in Maksure's twelfth place, and now we are in sarCosmopolite . 37. Seribbler's . . Carper's THIRD Place. We admit that . our growth is simply wonderful. *Blue Dog Do you know why COSMOP- Pink'Un. . . OLITE has grown so greatly in Roopa 8 24.09 | readability? IT'S BECAUSE PWhenedoadle . 19.46 | WE'AE INCREASED THE Slippineott’s. |. 18.16 | NUMBER OF BLANK SPACES Smarting Yet 16.16 | IN THE MAGAZINE! Out and In sos 8.01 We're going to keep on climb- Failure soe +99 | ing, too. Watch us. Eventually Dearson's . . 05 Nearly American “1 | we will land in FIRST Puace. *kecledes twenty a announc- EDITOR ing discontinuance of magazin **Includes 19.16 lines of editorial COSMOPOLITE MAGAZINE talk berating public for not YORK HAVEN subscribing. ***Decline from fourth place due to exclusion of forty lines of fiction for purpose of inserting ‘similar amount of editorial guff in nezt issue. PRANK MH. WILLIAMS. NO ROOM FOR DOUBT. Mr. Bronx—"* heard that she was engaged to Jack, but does she love him ?* Mrs, Bronx—** You bet she does. She has even named her pet poodle after him. comichooks.