Judge, 1925-04-25 · page 14 of 36
Judge — April 25, 1925 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks the romantic stereotype of the "tortured poet" — a figure celebrated in early 20th-century culture. The text ridicules how poets cultivate deliberate eccentricities (bizarre habits, affectations) that biographers later mythologize, while their actual work goes unread. The satire targets several absurdities: poets are valued for quirks like unusual hairstyles or cruelty to strangers rather than talent. Biographers obsess over trivial biographical details ("marking X's") to memorialize in school curricula. The punchline — that the misunderstood poet ultimately succeeds in *pork business*, not literature — deflates pretension entirely. By attributing the piece to "Corey Ford," this appears to be humorous advice literature mocking bohemian affectation and the public's gullible veneration of artistic eccentricity divorced from actual artistic merit. The comic strips below ("The power of the law") seem to continue this mockery.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Choose Your Career Now! younec man has a chance of becoming a poet provided he has a good growth of hair and sings tenor. He must develop a good stock of eccentricities, such as running his hand along the fence- palings when he is out walking, sticking stout people with Japanese paper knives, or sending out boxes of poisoned marshmallows at Christ- mas, These little idiosyncrasies will all be collected later by his biog- raphers, and memorize! after his death by the school children, who will probably never read any of his actual writings. “Rollo Twinge,” they will say. “Oh, yes, he’s the one who used to part his hair on both sides of his head. Author of — well, I forget what he wrote, but I know he wiped his hands on a New- foundland dog instead of using a napkin toothpick in public. Directions for Poets If the poet is born in a tenement, he must immediately make a large “X" in chalk on the front door, so that his biographers note the house for future refer He must make up his mind to it that neither of his parents will understand him. He must spend all his time lying on his stomach on a pillow (he must mark the spot with an *X") picking out fairies from the colors in the gold- fish globe; fur which he will be spanked by his parents (he must mark the spot with an “X"). None of the boys at boarding school will understand him and will call him WY, “Good Lor’, Bill, the wind that’s wasted blowin’ ships around!” “Lizzie; and he will be asked to resign from college at the end of his Sophomore year because somehow his professors don’t understand him either. When he writes his poems even the editors will not under: him, and he will end up by making a fortune in the pork business. Corey Ford comicbooks.com