Poems for Pale People A Volume of Verse — Themes and Context

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Authors: Ranck, Edwin Carty, 1879- Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: American poetry Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 11,604

Reading time 51 min

Text sections 2

The catalog record for Poems for Pale People A Volume of Verse — Themes and Context provides practical reading context through 11,604 words, 51 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 20.5 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “American poetry,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #26864

Edwin C. Ranck's 1906 nonsense verse collection, with a self-deprecating preface and poems on turkeys, hogs, and city editors, blending absurdity with dark humor.

Editorial Edition Score 4.4/5

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Edition quality

File: pg26864

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She was very good indeed, But when she was bad, she was horrid."_

_This is nonsense pure and simple and even the most ardent admirers of Mr. Longfellow must, when they try to make "forehead" and "horrid" rhyme, admit that it was very poor verse for the author of "Evangeline."_

_Bret Harte flew off at a tangent when he wrote about "Ah Sin, The Chinaman," a nonsense poem that gave "Bill Nye" his pseudonym. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay." Rudyard Kipling is often "caught with the goods on him" and Mark Twain wrote an "Ode to Stephen Dowling Botts."_

_And Great Scott! I almost forgot that even such a gentle, domestic creature as the cow has been the unconscious inspiration of much nonsense and has doubtless often chewed the bitter cud of reflection in deploring her undesired popularity. First she was forced (very much against her will, no doubt) to jump over the moon to the undignified strains of "Hey Diddle, Diddle." Then, just when beginning to breathe easily again after that astounding performance, Gelett Burgess came along and gave her more notoriety by raising the question as to whether there was such a thing as a "purple cow." And even today in many of the rural districts there are old farmers who never heard of Burgess and his "purple cow" who will tell you solemnly that "there is a cow of a sort of purplish color." Which goes to prove that after all nonsense is only sense plus--NON._

The poems in this collection have appeared from time to time in The Kentucky Post, The Cincinnati Post, The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, Humanity and The Valley Magazine.

WHY THE MOLE IS BLIND.

In days gone by, when cows could fly And goblins rode on bears; When fairies danced upon the green And giants moped in lairs, There lived alone upon a shelf A tinsie, winsie little elf.

Just when the stars came out at night And moonbeams filled the earth with light, Down from his perch this little elf Would jump and wander by himself. He wore a pair of little wings Tied in their place by golden strings.

One day he took a kind of notion To take a trip upon the ocean. He combed his hair and washed his face And put his little wings in place, Then from his shelf he softly stole And went to see his friend the mole Who gave to him a pea-green boat And guaranteed that it would float.

A funny thing about this boat 'Twas patterned from a ten-pound note. The little elf was greatly pleased And laughed until he sneezed and sneezed; He launched his boat upon the sea And kicked his little heels in glee.

The mole looked on in glad surprise (For in those days all moles had eyes.) He shouted out a loud farewell As the little row-boat rose and fell. The elf picked up a golden oar And soon lost sight of mole and shore.

The elf rowed out for quite a way And in the waves did sport and play, Until at length the sun sank low And then he thought it time to go. Now just as luck would have it then A prowling sea gull left his den.

The savage sea gull loudly laughed To see an elf in such a craft, And swooping down upon the water He did a thing he hadn't oughter, For with his strong and sturdy beak He caused the boat to spring a leak.

He said he longed for a little change And the bank-note boat was just in range; The poor young elf gave one big holler Just as the sea gull made a swallow (And this is strange indeed to follow For a gull himself is just a swallow.)

The faithful mole heard this loud yell And rushed down to the shore pell-mell. Alas, alas he was too late And saw his friend's unhappy fate; He groaned, and shrieked and tore his fur And raised an awful din and stir.

The sea gull heard this awful racket And seized the mole, just like a packet. He carried him across the seas To teach the young gulls A B C's. But the loving mole went blind with rage And they had to put him in a cage, And ever since that fatal night The moles have all been out of sight.

NOW THERE'S A COON IN THE MOON.

There was once an eccentric old coon, Who ate dynamite with a spoon, But when he got loaded The powder exploded-- And now there's a coon in the moon.

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Edwin C. Ranck's Poems for Pale People opens with a preface that disarms readers by declaring the volume was written “for no reason on earth and with no earthly reason.” The author compares nonsense rhymes to “smallpox, chicken-pox, yellow fever and other irruptive diseases,” setting a tone of playful self-mockery. The poems that follow, such as “My Life and Death. (By A. Turkey Gobbler)” and “The Epic of the Hog,” sustain this irreverent voice, using animals to comment on mortality and human folly. Despite the catalog subject “American poetry,” the work is squarely in the tradition of literary nonsense, with debts to Lewis Carroll and Ben King acknowledged in the text.

Self-Deprecation as a Framing Device

The preface establishes a paradoxical stance: Ranck insists his verses are worthless while simultaneously claiming to be “the greatest poetical genius who has not yet died in infancy.” This ironic bravado recurs in the poems. In “If I Were City Editor,” the speaker imagines dispensing rough justice to a supplicant, only to undercut the fantasy with a punchline about ordering “one more bier.” The turkey gobbler’s lament ends with a pun on Napoleon leaving “a Bonaparte.” Such wordplay suggests Ranck is less interested in sincere confession than in toying with the reader’s expectations. The preface’s admission that “thinking is too much like work” primes the audience to treat the verses as deliberate fluff, yet the consistent dark humor—especially in poems about slaughter—hints at a more sardonic intent.

Animal Voices and Mortality

Two of the longer poems adopt the perspective of animals facing death. The turkey gobbler knows he will be killed for Thanksgiving, while the hog narrates his journey to Packingtown. Both poems use first-person narration to create sympathy, then undercut it with absurd details: the turkey compares himself to Marie Antoinette, and the hog reflects that “even then I thought it true / That I would live forever.” The repeated line “O, Grave, where is thy victory?” from the turkey poem parodies biblical rhetoric. These pieces blend childlike rhyme schemes with adult themes of industrialized slaughter, a combination that gives the volume its distinctive edge. The catalog subject “American poetry” does not capture this specific blend of whimsy and grimness.

Formal Play and Literary Allusion

Ranck experiments with meter and rhyme while name-dropping canonical figures. “Transcendentalism” is a list poem defining the term through negations (“Not at all like Socialism, / Nor a bit like Atheism”), ending with a question that invites the reader to supply another “-ism.” The preface invokes Dryden and Longfellow, and the poem “If I Were City Editor” is explicitly “After Ben King.” These references ground the nonsense in a recognizable literary tradition, even as the verses themselves mock high seriousness. The volume’s brevity—around 11,600 words—means each poem must work quickly, and Ranck often relies on a single joke or pun to carry the piece. The result is a collection that rewards attention to its craft even as it disavows ambition.

Readers approaching Poems for Pale People should set aside expectations of conventional poetry. The work is best enjoyed as a period piece of American humor, where self-deprecation and gallows humor coexist. Pay attention to the prefaces and dedications, which frame the poems as deliberate trifles. The animal poems, in particular, reward close reading for their tonal shifts between comedy and pathos. This edition preserves the original 1906 text, including the author’s idiosyncratic punctuation and capitalization.

There’s something kind about a book that laughs at itself, the way Ranck’s turkeys and hogs do their mournful little dances. It reminds me of evenings spent with Among the Hills, and other poems Part 5 From Volume I of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier — Text and Context, where the quiet earth holds its own gentle, unsmiling truths. Both feel like old friends, waiting patiently. Among the Hills, and other poems Part 5 From Volume I of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier — Text and Context stays with you, softly.