Richard Armour life and biography

Richard Armour (Richard Willard Armour) was an American poet and author who wrote over sixty-five books.

In his early career he focused on serious literature, publishing (in 1935) a biography of the lesser English poet Bryan Waller Procter and in 1940, co-editing (with Raymond F. Howes) a series of observations by contemporaries about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge the Talker.

Armour wrote funny poems in a style reminiscent of Ogden Nash. These poems were often featured in newspaper Sunday supplements in a feature called Armour's Armory. Many of Armour's poems have been repeatedly and incorrectly attributed to Nash. Probably Armour's most-quoted poem (often attributed to Nash) is the quatrain: "Shake and shake / the catsup bottle / first none'll come / and then a lot'll." Another popular quatrain of his, also usually attributed erroneously to Nash, is: "Nothing attracts / the mustard from wieners / as much as the slacks / just back from the cleaners."

Armour also wrote satirical books, such as Twisted Tales from Shakespeare, and his ersatz history of the United States, It All Started With Columbus. These books were typically filled with puns and plays on words, and gave the impression of someone who had not quite been paying attention in class, thus also getting basic facts not quite right, to humorous effect.

Author of books:

It All Started with Columbus (1955)
It All Started with Europa (1955)
It All Started with Eve (1956)
It All Started with Marx (1956)
Twisted Tales from Shakespeare (1957)
Drug Store Days: My Youth Among the Pills & Potions (1959, memoir)
A Safari into Satire (1961)
Armour's Almanac (1962)
The Classics Reclassified (1963)
The Medical Muse (1963)
It All Started with Hippocrates: A Mercifully Brief History of Medicine (1966)
Going Around in Academic Circles: A Low View of Higher Education (1966)
It All Started with Stones and Clubs (1967)
My Life with Women: Confessions of a Domesticated Male (1968, memoir)
A Diabolical Dictionary of Education (1969)
Punctured Poems (1969)
English Lit Relit (1970)
AmericanLit Relit (1970)
A Short History of Sex (1970)
All in Sport (1972)
Going Like Sixty (1974)
The Academic Bestiary (1974)
It All Started with Nudes (1977)
Punctured Poems: Famous First and Infamous Second Lines (1982)
Our Presidents (1983)

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