SERVE A HOT MUFFIN SUPPER
Light flaky muffins, oven hot and golden topped, a suppertime goody that certainly will strike that hungry spot. Serve them with the finest, richest syrup you can buy anywhere. That’s “Velva,” with the best of flavor, nourishing goodness and the satisfying elements that put real strength into growing children. Give them Velva three times a day. They’ll say, “Great,” when they eat it on your flaky hot biscuits or on waffles or batter cakes.
I hope the unknown author of this little masterpiece will excuse my italics. The public simply will not see beauties that are not pushed under its nose. If the public could realize how much more difficult as well as more musical this style of writing, with its rich assonances and rhymes on day, say, great, flaky, cakes, is, than the insipid tinklings of the lyrists who feebly strum in pathetically threadbare metres through the pages of most magazines, then we would have a revolution in verse-writing. That we have not yet arrived at the revolution is proved by the fact that a talent of this order confines itself to writing syrup advertisements.
Take another case. The following appeared in a well known monthly. The editor doubtless looks on free verse as the rankest heresy:
A pipe, a maid,
A sheet of ice,
The glow of life—
And that glow doubled
By the glow of “Lady Strike”
Cuddling warm in the bowl;
This is the life
In the good old winter-time!
I do not say this is without faults. With the substance I have, naturally, nothing to do. But as regards form, which of your scribblers of cosmic bathos and “uplift stuff” could more cunningly weave pipe, ice, life, strike, and time into a stanza that has half as much swing and verve, as this? Note also the absence of adjectives. In short, here is poetry with a “punch” to it.
My last example is the most ambitious of all. I present it exactly as it was written without comment. It appeared in The North American Review:
Univernish
Compared with old-method varnishes,
it is convenience and certainty.
It means one finishing varnish
for the job, instead of two or three.
It does away with the extra cans
and the extra cleanings of brushes.
It avoids mistakes and accidents.
It is safe and sure and fool-proof.
Compared with other new-method varnishes,
it is a vital improvement.
It is the new-method varnish
which does not thicken in the can
nor clog the painter’s brush.
It remains a clear, pure liquid.
It is easy working and free-flowing.
It requires vastly less labor.
It gives a smooth, clean finish
which is especially beautiful
and durable.
We think we are quite conservative
in saying that it saves twenty per cent
of the finishing cost.
Gentlemen of the poets’ profession, be ashamed of yourselves! How can you expect to find readers by lazily sticking to your antiquated formulas, when even the advertisement writers in the very magazines you do your work for, are getting quite up-to-date?
Extreme Unction
Mary Aldis