On Perusing a Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925–2025, edited by Kevin Young*

These worthy poems are all editors’ selections

From thousands come across the transom.

To tell the truth the composite effect is rather glum.

What a relief to find that Ogden Nash made it in!

But how could they omit the mighty lines of Samuel Hoffenstein,

Who illuminated my childhood in the Great Karoo?

They might at least have included one.

In truth I'd rather have a century of poems

The sainted editors considered but rejected.

You bet your doggone life they'd be much more fun!

*New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025

Halloween 2025

Raising the Ante

 “sometimes the subject is not what you think”

—Rodney Jones, “The Ante”

What's the motive of my line—

Is it a thing to do with time?

Perhaps some sort of sexual tic

("Subject wants to dip his wick")?

I scarcely give a tinker's dam.

I scribble chiefly since I can.

Pain, those urges, even rhyming?

Sure, you know, it’s wasted whining!

The subject's really what you feel,

The night, a trip that rocks, unreal:

In growing up, you should conceal

Raising the ante on your life.

Take dear Calliope for wife;

She'll cut you in since it's her deal.

Epigraph: Rodney Jones, Imaginary Logic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 17.

Latin subjectus . . . literally, to throw under, from sub- + jacere to throw —Merriam Webster, s.v.

Halloween 2025

The Yoberati

The yoberati formed the Paris mob

Who pronged aristos’ heads on pikes.

Such is progress: now, today,

They lacerate the world with “likes.”

Though short on liberty and fraternity

We have descended to equality—

All yobs permit themselves to snob,

And sensibility to sigh: Yikes!

October 29, 2025