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Peeping Tom's Cabin: Comic Verse 1928-2008
“X. J. Kennedy’s well-known travels between the realms of the comic and the serious qualify him for dual citizenship in the world of poetry. Here, the playful is on full display in verse not just ‘light’ but bright and delightful.”—Billy Collins Peeping Tom’s Cabin is the first full-length collection of light verse for adults composed by one of America’s most celebrated poets. An uncompromising formalist, Kennedy uses a broad range of longstanding poetic forms, including limerick, nursery rhyme, ballad, rhymed epitaph, and clerihew. This collection includes many poems previously published in poetry and popular journals, including The Sewanee Review , The Atlantic Monthly , The New Yorker , and Poetry . These poems honor and skewer all classes of citizen, regardless of their revered place in society. Parents, lovers, poetry critics, students, and especially notable literary figures receive Kennedy’s astute comic attention. “To Someone Who Insisted I Look Up Someone” I rang them up while touring Timbuktu,
Those bosom chums to whom you’re known as “Who?” X. J. Kennedy has published six collections of verse, including Nude Descending a Staircase , which received the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets. His newest collection, The Lords of Misrule , received the 2004 Poets’ Prize. Kennedy has also authored eighteen children’s books and several textbooks on fiction and poetry. Other recognitions include the Los Angeles Book Award for Poetry, the Aiken-Taylor Award, and Guggenheim and National Arts Council fellowships. Kennedy was also given the first Michael Braude Award for light verse by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Those bosom chums to whom you’re known as “Who?” X. J. Kennedy has published six collections of verse, including Nude Descending a Staircase , which received the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets. His newest collection, The Lords of Misrule , received the 2004 Poets’ Prize. Kennedy has also authored eighteen children’s books and several textbooks on fiction and poetry. Other recognitions include the Los Angeles Book Award for Poetry, the Aiken-Taylor Award, and Guggenheim and National Arts Council fellowships. Kennedy was also given the first Michael Braude Award for light verse by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 12, 2024
Well-crafted and funny. I wish there was more contemporary poetry like this.
November 19, 2025
I didn’t finish it. Waste of time. Some of them were witty, but not enough.
February 16, 2013
Excellent traditional comic verse
X. J. Kennedy is well known as a formalist poet, that is, one who writes in traditional strong metrical or stanzaic forms. His comic verse is traditionalist not only in form, but also in mood and content: it is part of tradition of what you might call, paradoxically, “serious comic verse” which goes back through Swift to Martial and Juvenal in ancient Rome. Such verse is essentially satire, but not in the recent sense of the term, which has come to mean mocking some other form of literature. This older type of satire, though it aims to be funny, also makes an implicit social or moral criticism. It’s characterized by a particular sort of intellectual humor which used to be called “wit,” often makes use of learned allusions, and is frequently suggestive and occasionally outright obscene.
The poems in this book are excellent examples of this sort of verse, and will please anyone who is interested in the genre. But don’t be misled by the phrase “comic verse” into thinking these are the sort of “pop” light, wry verses you might occasionally find in a newspaper or non-literary magazine. They are serious literature in the sense I’ve described, and (although the author also has a reputation as a children’s writer) certainly not for children.
X. J. Kennedy is well known as a formalist poet, that is, one who writes in traditional strong metrical or stanzaic forms. His comic verse is traditionalist not only in form, but also in mood and content: it is part of tradition of what you might call, paradoxically, “serious comic verse” which goes back through Swift to Martial and Juvenal in ancient Rome. Such verse is essentially satire, but not in the recent sense of the term, which has come to mean mocking some other form of literature. This older type of satire, though it aims to be funny, also makes an implicit social or moral criticism. It’s characterized by a particular sort of intellectual humor which used to be called “wit,” often makes use of learned allusions, and is frequently suggestive and occasionally outright obscene.
The poems in this book are excellent examples of this sort of verse, and will please anyone who is interested in the genre. But don’t be misled by the phrase “comic verse” into thinking these are the sort of “pop” light, wry verses you might occasionally find in a newspaper or non-literary magazine. They are serious literature in the sense I’ve described, and (although the author also has a reputation as a children’s writer) certainly not for children.
September 3, 2012
What if you had to spend a week with nothing to read but Ogden Nash? Rather eat a bucket of hair? Comic verse is best served in small helpings.
This book's subtitle says it represents 80 years of Kennedy's lighter work (I'm pretty sure he is not 80 years old yet), which lets you know in advance what you're in for. There is zero pretense, no interest in poetry's ponderous weightiness, and outright rejection of scholarship. But I can imagine that a few of these poems, delivered amidst a reading of serious work, would bring down the house. There is definite genius here in language, and unexpected subject matter as well -- I dare you to write a poem about the second Ali-Liston bout that rhymes with Androscoggin.
I resisted at first. I rushed through with nary a chuckle. But when Kennedy resorted to limerick, he had me. Of this great comic poetic form, he proved a master.
You'll read this book in short doses, and skip the ones that don't tickle you. But you'll also run across some that surprise you with wit and insight and the occasional barb at human nature. Worth a stroll for the change of pace.
This book's subtitle says it represents 80 years of Kennedy's lighter work (I'm pretty sure he is not 80 years old yet), which lets you know in advance what you're in for. There is zero pretense, no interest in poetry's ponderous weightiness, and outright rejection of scholarship. But I can imagine that a few of these poems, delivered amidst a reading of serious work, would bring down the house. There is definite genius here in language, and unexpected subject matter as well -- I dare you to write a poem about the second Ali-Liston bout that rhymes with Androscoggin.
I resisted at first. I rushed through with nary a chuckle. But when Kennedy resorted to limerick, he had me. Of this great comic poetic form, he proved a master.
You'll read this book in short doses, and skip the ones that don't tickle you. But you'll also run across some that surprise you with wit and insight and the occasional barb at human nature. Worth a stroll for the change of pace.
February 15, 2015
Once upon a midnight dreary,
Blue and lonesome, missed my dearie
Would I find her? Any hope?
Quoth the raven six times, "Nope."
Blue and lonesome, missed my dearie
Would I find her? Any hope?
Quoth the raven six times, "Nope."
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews