sock poet

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've looked into this and, as I half suspected, the blurb about the
mysterious "sock poets" is essentially an academic press's advertising
gimmick to influence you to buy the book. I mean, who could they be?

Those whom the blurb memorably designates  the "sock poets" were a momentary
school of versifiers who responded to a weekly contest in the N.Y. _Sun_ to
write the best darn poems they could about knitting socks for doughboys
overseas. Prizes were various amounts of wool yarn.

The best of the best were anthologized at the end of the war in a little
anthology called _Sock Songs_, which you can read at Google Books.

Look! Here's a distinguished sock poet now! It's Edgar Alcott!:

A SOLDIER BOY

There's a soldier boy far across the deep sea
Who is fighting for you, fighting for me.
I do not know his name, still no stranger is he,
For he's fighting to make all humanity free.

I'm knitting socks for this dear soldier boy,
It gives me great pleasure, satisfaction and joy.
He's some loving mother's son, we all know,
Still he's fighting for you and for me also.
Ever read anything quite like it?  I bet you haven't!  We should be thankful
to Professor Van Wienen and the University of Illinois Press for bringing to
light this forgotten moment of American literary history, for coining the
name "sock poet" (my retroactive nomination for WOTY 2002), and especially
for not including Mr. Alcott's poem in their anthology, which, so far as I
can tell, features only one sock poem, by Helen Topping Miller. It is almost
noticeably more profound than the above. And more tightly knit.

JL




On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: sock poet
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> So, *not* a typo or other error for "sock puppet".
>
> m a m
>
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
> >wro=
> te:
>
> > "we all know that sock poetry is some of the worst bullshit ever to be
> > written on this planet. i won=C3=A2=E2=82=AC=E2=84=A2t even go into sock
> =
> music. or sock
> > painting. ok, so not everyone is artistically significant. but worthy
> > beings should at least have social conscience. sadly, socks have
> > nothing of that sort. "
> >
> > <
> >
> http://campcatatonia.org/article/37/and-now-for-a-completely-different-pe=
> rspective
>  > >
> >
> >
>
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>



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