Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978) was a victim of cancel culture long before that idea existed.
After she won the 1961 Pulitzer for her poetry—the first American poet ever to be so honored for light verse—W.D. Snodgrass, who was awarded the Pulitzer the previous year, commented that this “was horrifying; she used to write silly little verses for The Saturday Evening Post.”
Today, the genre of light verse is virtually nonexistent. Eroded as well are the institutions—marriage, the traditional family, a home of one’s own—that were dear to McGinley and were so very much a part of her work. We know where she stands, for example, when we read the first sentence of her collection of essays “Sixpence in Her Shoe,” which states: “This is a book for, by, and about the American housewife.” Three paragraphs later, she proudly declares: “By temperament I am a nest builder. I have other occupations, chiefly writing and the delights of conversation. Yet to keep a house is my native vocation and I consider it an honorable estate.”
Even as she wrote these words, the storm clouds that would blot them out—the cultural revolutions of the 1960s, especially the new feminism—were gathering.
Nest builders still dwell among us, but many of them, stay-at-home mothers and wives, often blush and fumble with their explanations when asked how they spend their talents and time. Vestiges of the domesticity extolled by McGinley, which she considered a cornerstone of civilization, remain, but the institutions of marriage, the family, and even motherhood have lost their shine.
Perhaps a little time spent with Phyllis McGinley and her largely forgotten writing will bring a bit of polish to those tarnished treasures.
A Life in Brief
Until McGinley was 12, financial hardship forced her family to live in near-poverty in rural Colorado. There, she and her brother were isolated from other children, and their schooling was erratic. Following her father’s death, she, her mother, and her brother then moved into the home of a widowed aunt in Utah.Yet this rough-and-tumble childhood and adolescence made McGinley into the poet she would become. The lonely girl wrote verse, read books far beyond her years, and developed a burning desire for stability and a home of her own.
After a stint at the University of Southern California, McGinley graduated from Salt Lake City’s University of Utah as a Phi Beta Kappa. For several years, she taught school while continuing to write and submitting her poems to magazines. Encouraged by these sales, she moved to New York City. There, she held several different jobs while her poems found a place in publications like The New Yorker.
In 1937, McGinley married Charles Hayden, and the couple moved to Larchmont, New York. It was a life that one of her two daughters, Patsy, later described as “a sanguine, benign, adorable version of ‘Mad Men.’” She also continued to write her poetry, which grew in popularity. Later, she added several children’s books to her publishing credits and began writing essays, some of which were collected in “Sixpence in Her Shoe” and “The Province of the Heart.” Several of her books, including her poetry, became bestsellers.
In 1965, McGinley was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. The cover story accompanying this photograph offers us a great view into the work and life of this busy woman.
Verse
In assessing her literary endeavors, McGinley considered herself a poet above all else. Below are just two selections from her hundreds of poems, beginning with “A Choice of Weapons:”And here are the last two stanzas of “Melancholy Reflections After a Lost Argument:”Sticks and stones are hard on bones, Aimed with angry art, Words can sting like anything, But silence breaks the heart.
From these lines we can make three general deductions. First, McGinley was no Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson. On the other hand, who is? Second, they show technical proficiency. Beat, rhyme, word choice: All are deftly rendered. And third, the woman who wrote these words was having a blast.And where’s the good of repartee To quell a hostile laughter, That tardily occurs to me A half an hour after?
God rest you merry, gentlemen, Who nastily have caught The art of always striking when The irony is hot.
We catch that sense of fun in the first three lines of “A Choice of Weapons,” where McGinley plays on the old schoolyard rhyme about sticks and stones. That expression “Words can sting like anything” even sounds like something a kid would say. Then comes that last line, which gives the reader pause to reflect on this bitter truth.
In the second piece, McGinley plays with another old adage, “striking while the iron is hot,” and connects with the reader through the missed chance for a retort. Who among us hasn’t thought of a great answer to some remark or accusation, but only too late?
McGinley also displayed a knack for satire. Here’s her complete “The Old Feminist:”
After her marriage and the move to Larchmont, McGinley often turned to suburbia and domestic life for her topics. By their titles alone, poems like “Ode to the Bath,” “Eros in the Kitchen,” “Monologue in a Pet Shop,” and “Dirge Over a Pot of Pâté de Foie Gras” announce their setting, subject, and the joy and humor the poet found in everyday life.Smugly upon the equal heights Enthroned at last where she belongs, She takes no pleasure in her Rights Who so enjoyed her Wrongs.
In “Apology for Husbands,” with its subtitle “In Answer to a Friend’s Observation That They’re ‘More Bother Than They’re Worth,’” we find just one example of McGinley’s fascination with domestic life. After she goes through a long list of pro-and-con arguments about the value of a husband, she concludes:
What gadget’s useful as a spouse? Considering that a minute, Confess that every proper house Should have a husband in it.
The Essayist
McGinley continues this defense in her essay “How Not to Kill Your Husband,” found in her “Sixpence” collection. At the end of this piece, where she considers what advice she might give a newlywed woman, she concludes:“But one axiom, and the most important, I shall keep to myself. For why should I bother advising any young wife about feeding her man on a diet of pure affection? It is true that husbands, like babies and other people, thrive on love and wither without it. It is the best life-preserving medicine in existence. But any woman who can’t figure that out for herself will never learn it anyhow.”
Is her counsel valid? Readers may answer that question as they will, but we’d probably agree that such written advice is surely as rare today as a honeymoon spent in Antarctica.
Some of McGinley’s other essays express thoughts so old-fashioned that they have come full circle and are now the new wisdom. “Realms of Gilt” reminds parents and children’s authors that even small children are explorers always up for a challenge—in this case, for books and vocabulary that raise them up rather than dumb them down. In another piece, when she learns that a friend considers teaching manners to children as being frivolous and confining—“white-glove syndrome”—McGinley argues with herself about the need for such instruction and comes to this conclusion: “‘Manners are morals,’ I repeated aloud as I took the lamb chops out of the refrigerator and made sure the lettuce was thoroughly dried for the sake of the salad. ‘They are the exercise of the body for the sake of the mind and soul.’”
3 Final Notes
W.D. Snodgrass may have considered Phyllis McGinley a joke, but one of the 20th century’s most renowned poets, W.H. Auden, wrote the foreword to her collection of poems, “Times Three.” Auden begins his introduction this way: “Phyllis McGinley needs no puff. Her poems are known and loved by tens of thousands. They call for no learned exegesis.” In other words, kudos to McGinley.
Next point: In “A Note to the Reader” in “The Province of the Heart,” McGinley tells the story of a certain Mr. Edwards who “once accosted Samuel Johnson in Butcher-row.” Johnson engaged Mr. Edwards in conversation, invited him home, and according to Johnson’s biographer, Samuel Boswell, the two men spent an afternoon in pleasant conversation. Boswell recorded several of Mr. Edwards’s remarks, one of which must have amused Johnson: “You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.”
That sort of cheerfulness, which seems rare among the literati these days, is the most conspicuous hallmark of McGinley’s work.
And finally, regrettably but unsurprisingly, nearly all of Phyllis McGinley’s books are now out of print. It seems our grim-in-the mouth age has little use for wit, sophistication, light verse, or applause for home and hearth. Too bad for us.
Yet readers who are willing to explore the internet, search out used book sites like abebooks.com, or visit secondhand bookshops, will find many of her books or individual poems available to them. And if you wish to know more about the poet herself, I invite you to read the Time cover story or listen to her interview with radio host and writer Douglas P. Cooper.
