Something Else Again — Reading Companion

Parody as a Critical Lens

Adams's parodies are not mere mimicry; they use the borrowed form to expose absurdities in the original or in contemporary society. In "If Amy Lowell Had Been James Whitcomb Riley," he imagines Lowell writing in Riley's dialect, producing lines like "The little orphant Annie's come to our house to stay"—a fusion that highlights the stylistic tics of both poets. Similarly, "If the Advertising Man Had Been Gilbert" applies the patter-song structure of Gilbert and Sullivan to a sales pitch: "When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is tabooed by anxiety, / I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety." The effect is to reveal the formulaic nature of both advertising and light opera.

Adams also targets specific works. "Maud Muller Mutatur" recasts Whittier's sentimental poem as a cynical commentary on class and marriage, ending with the farmer's wife regretting her choice. The parody works because it respects the original's rhythm while subverting its moral.

The Urban Landscape and Its Discontents

Several poems address the frustrations of modern city life. "A Psalm of Labouring Life" opens with a direct rebuttal of Longfellow: "Tell me not, in doctored numbers, / Life is but a name for work!" Adams replaces the original's earnestness with weary complaint: "Life is phony! Life is rotten! / And the wealthy have no soul." The poem's speaker, a miner or cotton picker, rejects the consolations of labor.

"Lines Written on the Sunny Side of Frankfort Street" contrasts the pastoral idyll of Milton's "L'Allegro" with the reality of a New York office worker. The speaker recalls "Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade" but now answers her question—"Will you, I wonder, ever sigh and yearn / At all?"—with a rueful "Yes." The poem's final line, "You haven't any notion how I miss / The shade," turns Milton's celebration of rural pleasure into a lament for lost leisure.

Romantic Conventions Under Pressure

Adams repeatedly deflates romantic clichés. In "Abelard and Heloïse," the famous lovers discuss the Portuguese and Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points before Abelard asks for "seven osculations." Heloïse's final verdict—"She loved an Intellectual Man"—undercuts the entire exchange, suggesting that intellectualism is merely a cover for desire.

"Fifty-Fifty" takes its epigraph from a psychoanalytic text and turns it into a comic meditation on street-corner longing. The speaker admires women he passes but fears they "yell for the police." The poem's consolation is that he feels "a passing joy" at seeing girls he does not know—a wry twist on the erotic motive.

"To Myrtilla" traces twelve years of fashion commentary, from directoire skirts to hobble skirts to polo coats. Adams admits defeat: "I surrender. I am beat. / ... In any garb you're just too sweet / For words." The poem's structure—each stanza ending with a short line—mimics the breathless pace of fashion itself.

The Craft of the Light Verse

Adams's technical skill is evident throughout. He handles complex meters with ease, as in "The Ballad of Justifiable Homicide," which uses anapestic tetrameter to tell a comic murder story. His rhymes are often unexpected and precise: "obese" / "police," "girds" / "words." He also experiments with form, as in "The Dictaphone Bard," a poem supposedly dictated into a machine, or "What the Copy Desk Might Have Done," which imagines newspaper editors rewriting classic poems.

The collection's title, Something Else Again, suggests both the variety of subjects and the iterative nature of parody—each poem is another take on an existing work. Adams acknowledges his sources in titles and epigraphs, inviting readers to compare. The humor depends on recognition: the more one knows the originals, the more layers of meaning emerge. Yet even without that knowledge, the poems work as self-contained jokes, thanks to Adams's crisp phrasing and timing.

Reading Something Else Again is best done with a browser or a memory of the poems it parodies—Horace's odes, Gilbert's libretti, Longfellow's psalms. Adams assumes his audience is literate and up on current events; the jokes about Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations may require a footnote. But the core pleasure is watching a skilled craftsman bend familiar forms to new purposes. Start with the Horatian imitations, then sample the urban complaints, and save the longer narrative ballads for last. The book rewards patience and a willingness to look up the originals.

It’s strange how Adams’ playful jabs at modern romance still land a century later, though I often find myself missing the quieter, unhurried charm of that era. That same wistfulness creeps in when I think about Within the Golden Gate A Souvenir of San Francisco Bay — Background and Themes—a little book that feels like a postcard from a forgotten afternoon, content to simply be.