Vers Libre and Advertisements

John Gould Fletcher

In common with all the judicious readers of American magazines and newspapers, I have learned to look on the advertising pages for the best examples of news the journalist can offer. It is only reasonable that this should be the case. Advertisement writers are the best-paid, least rewarded, and best-trained authors that America possesses. Compared to these, even the income of a Robert Chambers pales into insignificance. Moreover, they understand the public thoroughly and do not attempt to overstrain its attention by overseriousness, or exhaust its nerves by sentimentality. That is, the best ones do not. There may be some exceptions, but in the main I have found American advertisements refreshingly readable.

It had never occurred to me, however, that there might be gems of poetic ability hidden away in these tantalizing concoctions—these cocktails of prose. But I must revise my estimate. Without wishing to boom or discourage anyone’s products I cannot resist quoting some recent advertisements that I and I alone have discovered, seized, and gloated upon. After all, I approach the subject purely from the angle of form. What student of poetic form could afford to ignore the following:

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:

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

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?