Impertinent Poems

Cooke, Edmund Vance, 1866-1932Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 73K words
Chapters: 8

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Impertinent Poems by Edmund Vance CookeAuthor: Cooke, Edmund Vance, 1866-1932,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 20, 2010

Editor's review

This poetry collection comes from the early twentieth-century American poet Edmund Vance Cooke, and the word "impertinent" in the title signals its tone: playful, blunt, and slightly mocking observations of the world. Cooke's poems are mostly aimed at general readers; the language is not obscure, the rhythm is brisk, and he is good at distilling smiling epigrams from everyday trivialities and human weaknesses, making the book suitable for casual reading in fragments of time. The e-book edition was prepared by Project Gutenberg and is a public-domain text, laid out mainly as plain text, with no modern annotations or translation, so readers need some English reading ability. Its value lies not in a canonical place in poetry history but in offering a light, humorous reading experience: it can serve as easy introductory reading in English poetry and also suits readers curious about the style of American newspaper poetry in the early twentieth century. There is no need to tackle every poem; skipping around by interesting titles will better convey the goodwill and wit behind the "impertinence."

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers with basic English reading ability who want a light introduction to English poetry
Readers who enjoy humorous, satirical, short epigrammatic expression
People who need fragmented reading material and want to flip through a few pages during commutes
Readers interested in early twentieth-century American popular literature and newspaper poetry

Not a good fit for

Beginners whose English reading is not yet proficient and who need sentence-by-sentence translation support
Readers expecting deep imagery, complex poetic craft, or modernist experimental poetry
Researchers who need scholarly annotations, author chronologies, and detailed background materials

Reading tips

Start by reading the table of contents and choosing poems with interesting titles; there is no need to read from beginning to end in order.
Read each poem twice: first for the general meaning, second to notice rhyme and where the witty remarks fall.
Copy down lines you like and compare them with your own life experience to appreciate the satire.
If reading is difficult, start with shorter and medium-length poems to avoid losing interest by tackling long poems all at once.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

How difficult is the English in this book?

Overall it is medium-to-easy newspaper-style poetry: sentences are not long and vocabulary is mostly everyday, though some early twentieth-century expressions and allusions remain. Readers with reading ability around CET-4 can read through with a dictionary and need not understand every word.

Why is the book called "Impertinent Poems"?

"Impertinent" here is closer to playful, presumptuous, or impolite than to genuinely rude. Cooke often discusses human affairs in a bantering tone, and the title summarizes this smilingly offensive stance; a few poems will make it clear.

Does this e-book edition have annotations or a translation?

Project Gutenberg provides the public-domain English original, usually without modern editorial annotations and without a Chinese translation. Readers who need background information can look up introductions to the author and early twentieth-century American poetry on their own.

Is it suitable as an introduction to English poetry?

It can serve as light supplementary reading. Its language is straightforward and its pieces are short, which can reduce intimidation about poetry; but to systematically study meter and imagery analysis, readers still need annotated anthologies with explanations.

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About the author

Cooke, Edmund Vance, 1866-1932 Author · American · 1866–1932

Edmund Vance Cooke (1866–1932) was an American poet and lecturer. Public information about his life is limited, but it is confirmed that he was known mainly for his inspirational poetry and newspaper columns. Among his works held in this collection, his representative book Impertinent Poems embodies his creative profile: it expresses encouragement and uplift in verse, with plain language and a brisk rhythm that carries the particular appeal of a lecturer. Such works were aimed at general readers and circulated through newspapers, giving him a place in the popular literature and mass reading of his time in America. Cooke's subjects tend toward everyday experience and reflections on life, and his style is accessible rather than obscure, well suited to recitation and quotation—a quality that reflects the interplay between his dual identity as lecturer and poet.