Explore "It is the Fashion Now" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is the fashion now to wave aside As tedious, obvious, vacuous, trivial, trite, / All things which do not tickle, tease, excite
To some subversion, or in verbiage hide
Intent, or mock, or with hot sauce provide
A dish to prick the thickened appetite;
Straightforwardness is wrong, evasion right; It is correct, de rigueur, to deride. What fumy wits these modern wags expose, / For all their versatility: Voltaire, / Who wore to bed a night-cap, and would close, / In fear of drafts, all windows, could declare
In antique stuffiness, a phrase that blows
Still through men's smoky minds, and clears the air.