Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements.
Please aware that most of these haiku were NOT WRITTEN on the date in the title – for an explanation of this please see The Series link in the navigation table.
fluent mastery –
the armamentarium
of the mob master
Part of the HL Mencken Project –
From Prejudices – Roosevelt: An Autopsy, orgirianlly published in 1919.
Here, Mr. Mencken is writing about Theodore Roosevelt use of democratic counter words and democratic gestures as part of TR’s equipment, and techniques or armamentarium as an ace manipulator of his followers.
Oh for a chance of Mr. Mencken on a recent President!
innumerable
salient phenomena,
brummagem ideals
Part of the Mencken Haiku project.
You have to love Mencken swinging words like big bats.
Brummagem?
Cheap, showy, or counterfeit!
Just the word to describe anything Mr. Mencken would dislike.
From Prejudices – Roosevelt: An Autopsy
An essay on the life of Theodore Roosevelt originally published in 1919.
fascinated by
riddle, ready, take refuge
and left wondering
Part of the HL Mencken Haiku project – from A Book of Preferences – and comments comparing the writing of Theodore Dreiser and Joseph Conrad.
faces first to last
massive intolerable
fact – conquered, undone
I have always admired the work and writing of HL Mencken.
Mr. Mencken stands alone in his work on American English as a language.
Through his work, his construction and vocabulary is a wonder to behold.
Then there is Mencken the man.
A man with many prejudices say some critics.
Not prejudiced, say others, he hated everyone and everything the same.
At least everything and anything that walked with pretention and falseness.
In the play about the Scopes Trial, ‘Inherit the Wind’, Gene Kelly, plays the reporter, HE Hornbeck, a role modeled after Mr. Mencken.
The Clarence Darrow character named Henry Drummond, played by Spencer Tracy, gets tired of Hornbeck and yells, “Hornbeck, I’m getting tired of you. You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.”
The point here is that I am going to work with Mr. Mencken.
I am going to look for his construction and vocabulary and see what kind of haiku might be fashioned.
This haiku is the first one in the Mencken Project.
Adapted from a Book of Prefaces and a comment on the writing of Joseph Conrad.
increased ignorance
won’t increase capacity
for good government
For the Mencken Project.
This is not actually Mencken but Mencken quoting William Edward Hartpole Lecky who said: “Nothing in ancient alchemy was more irrational than the notion that increased ignorance in the elective body will be converted into increased capacity for good government in the representative body.“
And while ignorance will not increase capacity for good government, it sure does increase the probability of being elected.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky quoted by HL Mencken, in Notes on Democracy, 1927
No Haiku For You 