Comely, amber-eyed Phyllis McGinley is a suburban housewife and mother whose lively curiosity and needle-pointed mind produce some of the most wryly pleasant light verse now being written. New Yorker readers have delighted for 20 years in the stings of her short barbs, sharpened on the complexities of modern living. She has published six books of poetry (the last, in 1951, an unabashed panegyric to suburbia called A Short Walk From the Station) and eight books for children.
She has written the lyrics for a Broadway revue, Small Wonder, and the continuity for a classic movie, The Emperor's Nightingale. She has...