Life, 1897-04-08 · page 8 of 26
Life — April 8, 1897 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Ten Best Short Poems" - Life Magazine Page 274 This page discusses editor Richard Dana's selection of the ten best short poems in English. The satirical angle appears in the opening: Dana had been reading war news from Cuba, Crete, and the Philippines while eating rare meat for breakfast—suggesting his violent, martial mood influenced his poetry choices. The cartoon "Under the Wether" depicts a man collapsed or lying down, apparently illustrating the physical toll of Dana's editorial process or the general war-saturated mood of the period. The page includes an anatomical illustration of "The Brain of Aubrey Beardsley," the famous Art Nouveau illustrator, likely mocking aesthetic pretension. A humorous dialogue ("Too Late") follows, where an editor's poem is eaten by an office cat—a joke about the fate of submitted work.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
> LIFE: THE TEN BEST SHORT POEMS. ER since Mr. Dana, E of the New York Sun, edited the ‘* House- hold Book of Poetry” he has been considered a judge of that commodity, and what he says goes. He re- cently published his choice for the ‘ten best short poems,” and they are mighty good reading. even if you know most of them by heart They aren't really the ten best poems for every- body, or even for Mr. Dana at all times. They are simply the ten poems. that most appealed to Mr. Dana on the day when he Poetry is good or bad toa man ac- made his choice. cording as it Juts hes mood. Judging from this selection Mr. Dana had been eating rare meat for breakfast, with blood-pudding, and had been reading the war news in the Sw from Cuba, Crete, and the Philippines. Five of Hy, MD THE LAST ROENTGEN TRIUMPH. THE BRAIN OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY. the ten poems have to do with war and its implements. When you have read them you want to buckle on a sword and kill something—even if it is a Mugwump. That is, no doubt, how Mr. Dana felt. Then he put in “The Tiger,” by William Blake, as a sort of memory of the days when he backed Tammany. This opens up an interesting question, which Lirk deems worthy of submitting to a popular competition, believing that its readers are fully able to know a good poem when they sce it Let those of our readers who think they know what are the best ten short poems in the English language send their lists in to Lire, and for the one who guesses the nearest right, according to the UNDER THE WETHER. combined popular judgment, a suitable prize will be given; not $10,000 in cash, but something that every reader of Lire will be glad to have. The announcement of the prize will be made later. TOO LATE. FPitor: You remember that poem you ~ left the other day on my desk? While 1 was out to luncheon the office cat came around and chewed it up. CasTLe (the poet): Great heavens! where is that cat? “He has gone into a trance, and all our efforts to bring him to have failed.”