Classic Poem

Mr. Writer Smear de Smear,
You're winning columns of renown,
Your newest “candid” book on sex
Is selling all about the town.
That kind of book I cannot brook;
I hold that it is far from sane;
Your notion of a hundred girls
Gives me a sharp and shooting pain.

Mr. Writer Smear de Smear,
I know you put on lots of swank;
You say that life is only swill—
Your far too fluent pen is “frank.”
You call a spade a hand-grenade,
You prate of dreams and anthropoids;
A simple tale of honest stuff
Is worth a hundred phony Freuds.

Mr. Writer Smear de Smear,
You thought to give me quite a turn;
But when it comes to candor, give
Me Rabelais or Laurence Sterne.
In various ways you sought my praise,
And my contempt is my reply.
The Shermans and the Billy Phelps
Are not more cold to you than I.

Mr. Writer Smear de Smear,
You have a calculating heart,
If any. And your carelessness
You want to make us think is Art.
Your “freedom” is but laziness;
Your “artistry” is only queer;
Your mannerisms are but the pose
That stamps the stuff of Smear de Smear.

Trust me, Mr. Smear de Smear,
From yon blue heavens that smile above
The gardener Adam and his wife
Laugh at your claims of neo-love.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
It is not great to be complex;
Kind art is more than Waldo Frank,
And simple faith than spurious sex.

Mr. Writer Smear de Smear,
If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no sewers that you may dig?
Are there no chartless wonderlands?
O teach the human race to read
That life's not merely Sex and Woe.
Pray Heaven for a little art,
And let bunk realism go.