More Misrepresentative Men

Harry Graham returns with more delightfully waspish portraits of the men who populate his world. Following the success of the original collection, this sequel offers further verse explorations of familiar types: the braying hero, the self-important poet, the martinet officer, the earnest reformer, and a parade of other specimens of masculinity at its most absurd. Graham's wit operates in the tradition of W.S. Gilbert and the music-hall poets, skewering pomposity and pretension with an elegant turn of phrase rather than a bludgeon. These are affectionate mockeries, the kind of verse that Victorian and Edwardian audiences would have recognized instantly, each stanza a small mirror held up to the absurd performance of manhood. The humor remains refreshingly light, never cruel, but pointed enough to puncture the more ridiculous varieties of male self-regard. Whether you're revisiting these verses or discovering them fresh, there's something quietly satisfying about seeing one's own type anatomized in verse.