The Poetry of Blatz Beer?

Check out this great 1883 New Year's greeting card and its poetic ad for Blatz beer, all products of the Valentin Blatz Brewing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the time of this card's issue, Mr. Blatz was still operating the brewery he'd started in 1850 right down the road from Johann Braun's City Brewery (est. 1846). Upon Braun's death in 1889, the two companies would merge to become the third largest brewer in Milwaukee. In 1959, the Blatz brand label was sold to Pabst, and in 2005-2006, the Valentin Blatz Brewing Company Office Building was converted into condos.










































If you enjoyed the advertising poetry in this posting, you might also enjoy:

Poetry in Lotion
The Poetry of Ex Lax
Bob the Bunny
C.G. Blatt's Photographic Emporium
Dr. C.B. Weagley, Veterinary Surgeon
The Palace Saloon and Restaurant

Football Frolics & Gargling Oil: From the Poetry & Popular Culture Mailbag

The Poetry & Popular Culture office receives a fair amount of correspondence from people interested in the lives that poetry leads outside of college classrooms and other certifiably poetic haunts like cafes and the avant-garde. This week, we bring you a letter from a reader in Salem, Oregon, who asks a fairly common question about the poetry of popular culture. Our response follows.

Dear Poetry & Popular Culture:

What's, like, the relationship between song lyrics and poetry?

Desperately Seeking Salem

Dear Desperately,

Thanks for asking! I suppose there are still some crusty old fogies out there who'd maintain that there's some measurable, qualitative difference between poems written in rhyme and meter and song lyrics written in rhyme and meter, but Poetry & Popular Culture does not number itself among them. After all, a historically- informed reader discovers that the distinction between poetry and song lyrics—indeed, the very need to distinguish between the two—is in fact a relatively recent one and that Americans have long imagined poetry as song lyrics (or potential song lyrics) and vice versa. Let's take a little tour of the subject beginning with a songster put out in 1889 to advertise "Merchant's Gargling Oil" (pictured to the left).

Like the farmer's almanacs of the nineteenth century, this songster contains a number of different elements between its covers. In stating the book's "primary intention of advertising Gargling Oil and Worm Tablets," the product's makers then go on to summarize its other contents: "a calendar for practical use, and for amusement the latest Popular Songs and a concise summary of the principal points upon which the so-called Science of Palmistry is based." Of special note, perhaps, is the fact that the song lyrics are printed without musical notation (pictured to the left). With the exception of the chorus notation, "The Toboggan Slide" thus looks and reads like any ol' poem that might have appeared in a daily paper from the time.

Why, you might ask, is the musical notation left out? Did the folks at Merchant's assume audiences already knew the tune to "The Toboggan Slide"? Would go ahead and make up their own tune? Would sing it to the tune of an already-existing song, replacing that song's original lyrics with the lyrics of "The Toboggan Slide"? Odds are, the regular meter of "The Toboggan Slide" meant that the song (if it wasn't written to music) could be easily adapted to already existing tunes; that is, the tunes of many popular songs became templates on which to graft new lyrics—a form which privileges, say we at the Poetry & Popular Culture office, the content of the individual lyric. This is the general method of the I.W.W. Songbook as well, a twentieth-century, pro-labor songster issued by the Industrial Workers of the World in order "to fan the flames of discontent." Leafing through the book, one encounters lefty lyrics written to well-known tunes such as "Auld Lang Syne," "Onward Christian Soldiers," "Tipperary," and "The Shade of the Old Apple Tree." This not only made it easier for people to learn the songs, but it no doubt parodied the originals as well; could one very well sing the I.W.W's version of "A Little Talk with Jesus," for example—

The preachers, cops and money-kings were working hand in hand,
The boys in blue, with stars and stripes were sent by Uncle Sam;
Still things were looking blue, 'cause every striker knew
That weaving cloth with bayonets is hard to do.
John Golden had with Mr. Wood a private interview,
He told him how to bust up the "I double double U."
He came out in a while and wore the Golden smile.
He said: "I've got all labor leaders skinned a mile."
John Golden pulled a bogus strike with all his "pinks and stools."
He thought the rest would follow like a bunch of crazy fools.
But to his great surprise the "foreigners" were wise,
In one big solid union they were organized.

—without comparing the song's original content with the new one? All in all, this strikes us as a particularly poetic endeavor.

Or consider the item pictured to the left—a four-page announcement advertising a "Football Frolic" held in Detroit, Michigan, probably in the 1940s or 50s (there's no date on the flier). For the grand admission fee of 35 cents—with proceeds apparently going to the Junior Alliance of St. Andrew's Paris—one would get an evening's-worth of probably highly- chaperoned dancing. The three remaining pages of the advertisement are, like the songster distributed by Merchant's Gargling Oil, a mixture of song lyrics and classified ads for local businesses including the Moderne Corset Shop (operated by C.C. Szemborski and located at 7341 Michigan Avenue), Dr. Frank J. Czapski a local dentist, and The Martin Bar ("The Popular Place for your Favorite Drink").

Again, the song lyrics are presented without musical notation, though in some cases readers probably couldn't avoid singing the tunes at least inwardly, as is the case with "Over the Rainbow" written for, and made popular by, The Wizard of Oz in 1939 and pictured here. Still, even with that soundtrack playing in our minds, we can't shake the fact that reading "Over the Rainbow" printed as a poem is a different experience than listening to it. Even if "Over the Rainbow" isn't a poem when broadcast, we contend it certainly becomes one when printed here and that there's a certain kind of interference or static that happens when one is asked to re-adjust one's attention to read what one normally hears—the kind of defamiliarization with language that a lot of modern poetry cultivates.

As much as the ads for Merchant's Gargling Oil and the Football Frolic suggest that song lyrics were printed as poetry, that doesn't necessarily mean that readers actually linked poetry and song in their own minds. For evidence of that, let's turn to our final example—a large, three inch-thick scrapbook of poetry and song lyrics assembled during World War II. Here we do encounter musical notation that differentiates song ("A Sabbath Day's Work") from poem ("The Old Scotch Church"). The album is an interesting one: it contains songs, lyrics, and poems having to do with a range of ethnic and regional identities and includes poems from popular writers as well as "literary" authors like Lord Byron, Robert Burns, Edgar Lee Masters, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

However, the distinction between song and lyric suggested by the page above doesn't hold throughout the collection. Here—a detail from a larger page "themed" around the subject of African-Americans and the American South—the scrapbook's compiler has pasted some of the lyrics to "Dixie" just above a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Perhaps there is a difference between the two, but that difference is a relatively small difference between poetic forms—one poem includes a chorus, one does not—not a substantial difference in genre. Otherwise, both poems are printed in lines, both are metered and rhymed, both give the reader elocutionary cues (one a soundtrack demanding a certain pitch and tune, the other the phonetics of dialect), and both ask the reader to inhabit a first-person person voice that is essentially vicarious in nature (one wishes to get back to Dixie, the other is a dying wish).

So, Desperately Seeking, that iPod you carry—with its mixture of Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Duran Duran—is a portable poetry player, a 21st-century version of the scrapbook pictured above. Whether the poetry you listen to is good or not is not for Poetry & Popular Culture to say. But we'll go, well, on the record saying it is, in fact, poetry.

Sincerely,

Poetry & Popular Culture

Write 'em Cowboy: Lovin' the Lariat Laureates

You may have missed it—maybe you were distracted by the fuss that the Academy of American Poets kicks up about National Poetry Month out on the east coast each year—but April 19-25 was Cowboy Poetry Week to folks out West. It has been since April 11, 2003, in fact, when the U.S. Senate, led by a bipartisan group of Senators from Kansas, Montana, Nevada and Utah, unanimously passed a resolution recognizing "National Cowboy Week." Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican and one of the resolution's sponsors, explained, "Many think cowboys are a thing of the past, but I can tell you otherwise. In many western states like Montana, cowboys gather around a campfire and swap stories just as frequently as they did one hundred years ago. This oral tradition is now captured in written form as well, and several websites are dedicated solely to preserving and disseminating cowboy poetry and its history. My resolution will recognize the contribution of cowboy poetry to our history of the West, but also to mark it as a thriving tradition that continues even today."

Senator Burns is not just, uh, horsing around here, though that doesn't mean one can't wonder at the same time how much his soaring rhetoric calibrates with everyday life. Y'all might ask, for example, exactly how "thriving" is the thriving tradition of cowboy poetry that Burns extols and how, precisely, has this poetry really shaped the history of the West? Or, alternately, ya might query whether today's cowpokes really gather round campfires as often as they did a century ago—or whether they actually turn, instead, to their PC's and PowerMacs to make the range a little more like home? How, in other words, has trading in barbed wire for FireWire changed the way people out west rustle up their verse?

But one thing Senator Burns is not is wrong: cowboy poetry is alive—not just at highly-staged festivals, in the U.S. Senate chambers, or around century-old campfires burning a mixture of nostalgia and anachronism. Take, for example, the Rosebud-Treasure County Brand Book (pictured to the left), a spiral-bound book published in 1983 that records the various marks and brands of livestock owners from two adjacent counties in Burns's home state of Montana. The publication is not strictly a reference book, though. More like one of the farmer's almanacs from the 18th or 19th centuries which combined calendars with facts, figures, tasty morsels of historical advice, and—of course—lots of poetry, this Brand Book mixes together verse, anecdotes, jokes, stories, and even a glossary defining once-colloquial terms such as "dally," "kack," "slick fork," and "town hole." In other words, the Rosebud-Treasure County Brand Book is not just a handy-dandy reference guide designed to identify, record, and sort out the American West's ideogrammatic language of private property ownership, but it's also a sourcebook containing the markings—linguistic and otherwise—of a region's cultural property as well.

And crucial to this cultural property is poetry, and specifically (at least for folks in Rosebud and Treasure counties) the verse of Bob Fletcher, which the Brand Book features at length (pictured to the left). Poems like "The Trail of an Old Timer's Memory" and "The Big Sissies" are funny, self-conscious takes on what the east oftentimes assumes is an unquestioned desire on the part of westerners to get back to the good old days when men were men, women were women, and governments were smaller than they are now. In fact, however, "The Big Sissies" makes fun of this regressive 'tude by hilariously voicing an old-timer's scorn for "this new culture stuff" which includes airplanes, autos, records, radio, and even modern, uh, facilities that have "softened the old human herd." "Now, pardner," the poem's speaker explains:

...these toilets, for instance,
They fix 'em in all sorts of shape
With colored glazed tile
And puttin' on style
With rolls of this yere fancy crepe.

Why I've seen the day not so distant
When you welcomed a hole in the ground
With just a peeled rail
Supportin' your tail
And a catalog lyin' around.

Or I can go back a step further
Ere even the old rail was there,
When you'd squat on the hoof
With the sky for a roof
And then reach for a prickly pear.

Poetry & Popular Culture can't say for sure whether Senator Burns would cite "The Big Sissies" as evidence that cowboy poetry is thriving, but he could do worse, we think, than rope this one into the conversation. Whether and how it, and other poetry like it, contributes to the history of the west and the maintenance of a system of property that isn't just private is another question—and one, say we, that is definitely worth askin'. Like, totally, dude.

Guest Posting: Khalil Gibran, Local Boy Made Good

Poetry & Popular Culture correspondent Phil Metres reflects on the life and times of Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran, author of what's become the best-selling single volume of poetry in U.S. history. Of all the things Gibran was—a man, a legend, a local-boy-made-good, a salve for the spiritual homelessness of immigrant Arab Americans—he was also a guest at the Brooklyn Heights home of Metres's great- grandparents in 1927. Read on to find the full text of Gibran's thank-you letter to the Boulos family—and to discover the nation of prophets that The Prophet left in its wake.


The first thing you'll learn about Khalil Gibran from an Arab—particularly from a Lebanese immigrant in love with the Old Country—is that Khalil Gibran's name is not, in fact, Khalil Gibran. Nor is it, as my Knopf edition of The Prophet has it, “Kahlil Gibran.” Rather, he was born Gibrān Khalīl Gibrān bin Mikhā'īl bin Sa'ad. It might be typical for an immigrant to the New World to shed some of the flourishes of an Old World name, so the Ellis- Island-style reduction is not so surprising. However, the spelling of Gibran's first name still mystifies me; in Arabic, the sound that we transliterate as “kh” is, if I’m not mistaken, an aspirated “h” sound, so the displacement of the “h”—which appears not only on his books, but also on his letterhead—is but one of many mysteries of the boy from Bsharri.

In the New Yorker last year, Joan Acocella’s review “Prophet Motive” situated new biographies on the poet in the pop cultural sensation that Gibran became and continues to be:

"Shakespeare, we are told, is the best-selling poet of all time. Second is Lao-tzu. Third is Kahlil Gibran, who owes his place on that list to one book, 'The Prophet,' a collection of twenty-six prose poems, delivered as sermons by a fictional wise man in a faraway time and place. Since its publication, in 1923, 'The Prophet' has sold more than nine million copies in its American edition alone. There are public schools named for Gibran in Brooklyn and Yonkers. 'The Prophet' has been recited at countless weddings and funerals. It is quoted in books and articles on training art teachers, determining criminal responsibility, and enduring ectopic pregnancy, sleep disorders, and the news that your son is gay. Its words turn up in advertisements for marriage counselors, chiropractors, learning-disabilities specialists, and face cream."

Acocella’s slightly mocking tone toward Gibran’s New-Age success is fairly typical of the intellectual and literary set, of course. Poets are relentless in their derision of Gibran, placing him somewhere around Jewel and Jimmy Carter in their pantheon. (My college roommate, also of Lebanese descent, called The Prophet “a kind of New Testament for Schoolgirls.”)

But in my household growing up—and in my father's childhood home—Gibran was a revered name, not only because he was a Lebanese poet who wrote the ubiquitous The Prophet, but also because he hailed from the hometown of my father's mother: Bsharri, Lebanon. In fact, Gibran even came to stay at my family's home in Brooklyn Heights (290 Hicks Street) for a while. According to family legend, he even wrote some of his Prophet while there.

I can’t confirm that legend exactly—it seems the sort of mythic and delusionary grandeur that I love about my family. But I do have in my possession a letter that Gibran wrote to my great-grandmother thanking the family for their hospitality and generosity. Whatever else you want to say about Gibran, he was a local boy made good. And, in the process of blazing his trail from Bsharri, he gave Arab Americans and Arab American poets a figure of their own possible success in translating ineffable Bsharris into poetic Brooklyns.

Incidentally, Gibran's “masterpiece,” such as it is, turns not so much upon poetry as upon the genre of wisdom literature and its subgenre, the aphorism, which holds a particularly valued place in Arab culture. Like all good aphorists, he uses language that is both plain and metaphorical; it invites understanding yet in a way that brushes against the mysteries of being alive. There’s no doubt that the style occasionally ascends into comical elevations, and that its high tone seems lost in the ironies and specificities of American life. But that sort of spiritual homelessness pretty much describes a large swath of immigrant life. On houses, for example, the Prophet says:

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.

It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.

Speaking of houses, here—in a rough translation and pictured to the left below—is the letter Gibran sent to my great-grandmother, Nehia Boulos, thanking her for hosting him at 290 Hicks Street:

Kahlil Gibran
51 West 10^th St.
New York City

April 22, 1927

To the Woman of My Country,

I salute you with a thousand salutes. I was very happy receiving your second letter, this is due to missing your first letter between my going to Boston and getting back to New York and could not find your address among my papers, and there are so many of them in this room.

I beg your pardon and forgiveness. You will know that every breeze from our Old Country breezes takes me back to that high mountain and that holy valley, you and your family and all that surround you are from these delightful breezes.

In every season I leave to Boston, leaving behind me all my works. This is because I prefer to be around people who were where I was born and they like I did and they are like me and sincere to this beautiful far country.

I beg you first to give best wishes to your kind husband and children (old and young) (God bless them), and second to mention my name with kindness to your dear parents, and to your relatives. They are, like you well are, related to me. The same blood that flows in their veins flows through mine too.

God bless you and protect you, from the sincere son of your country,

Khalil Gibran

The letter has the kind of poetic language which is typical not just of a poet, but of the Arabic language as well. But the letter's poetry is not explained by the Arabic language, though. In his dedication to my copy of The Prophet, given to me on my 20th birthday, my father writes, in English: “you are a prophet yourself and a distant cousin of Kahlil. If you could take in complete the pride and love other people have of you, you would be an even happier young man.”

In her review of Gibran's life, Acocella notes, “a later mentor declared him a mystic, 'a young prophet.' (This was before he had published anything professionally.) And so he began to see himself that way.” I, too, was baptized into the possibility of self-mythology. It was a gift, I see now, to have the sort of parents willing to see prophecy in a vexatious, self-conscious, over-serious and dreamy child. As Gibran would have it, via the Prophet’s own words: “Your children are not your children… You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” Something like that.

Phil Metres is an Associate Professor of English at John Carroll University. He is the author, most recently, of To See the Earth (poetry), Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront, Since 1941 (scholarship), and the poetry anthology Come Together: Imagine Peace. You can find his blog here.

Poetry in Lotion

Check out the newest anti-aging treatment to hit the shelves of your local drugstore: DERMAdoctor's "Poetry in Lotion" which claims to be—chuckle, chuckle—"well versed in reducing the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles & age spots." While the Poetry & Popular Culture office has yet to test the product personally, Poetry in Lotion is generally getting good consumer reviews. "I went to bed 40-something, with deep lines around my mouth, forehead and eyes," writes one reviewer, "and I woke up with a 30-something face."

The convergence of poetry and anti-aging treatment is not a particularly new one, however. From the late nineteenth- century forward, soap manufacturers and skin cream proponents have pitched the curative powers of their dermatological applications via verse of all kinds. Check out "Her Secret" from an ad for Cleaver's Juvenia Soap (pictured to the left) that appeared in Harper's and which reads:


I met a maid, a charming maid,
Whose face owned youth and beauty;
I felt to speak a word to her
Was but a man's clear duty.

Sweet maid, I said, what lends such charms
To light each lovely feature—
Does hope, ambition, love or gold?
Do tell me, sweetest creature.

The light upon my features, sir,
Is not of love or hope;
I've only washed my face just now
with Cleaver's Juvenia Soap.

Compared to Juvenia—which produced nearly instantaneous results for users a century ago—Poetry in Lotion is a slow-acting agent, requiring all of a night's sleep for its effects to become visible. While Poetry & Popular Culture can't account for the slowdown, it is waiting for the next advance in poetic skin-care treatment: Alexander Pope-on-a-Rope.

Poetry & Popular Culture Heroes: Lucas Bernhardt

In preparation for the 2007-08 basketball season, the Portland Trail Blazers' most prominent fan-blog, Blazer's Edge, elected its first official Poet Laureate via an open contest. This year, Blazer's Edge did the same, and Lucas Bernhardt—an avid Blazers fan and recent graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop—was voted in as co-poet laureate of the site. Poetry & Popular Culture recently caught up with Bernhardt and asked him to, well, jump through a couple of hoops.

Poetry & Popular Culture: How did you become co-Poet Laureate of Blazer's Edge?

Lucas Bernhardt: Blazer's Edge held a contest during the off-season, and the voting was so close that they awarded the position to both me and a writer who uses the screen name T. Darkstar.

P&PC: It sounds like it was a tight race. In fact, the contest coordinator had to dispel suspicions of ballot stuffing when your poem “The Assistant Coach” received a wave of last-minute support from voters. “Apparently,” he reassured readers, “people were just stirred by [the] verses and had to vote. Nothing untoward went on. It's simply the mark of a great poet!” How closely did you follow the election—and how did you celebrate?

LB: I don't remember how closely I followed the contest, but I did feel the suspicious people had a point. I had mentioned the proceedings to a few friends in the Workshop, and word got around. I hadn't told anyone which poem was mine, nor what my screen name was—and, actually, another writer from the Workshop had a poem in the running—but I imagine some of those last-second votes came from nearby. My intention was to get more writers in on the act, but I probably should have known better. The celebration must have been something....I can't remember it at all.

P&PC: How many poems have you written for Blazer's Edge?

LB: Bunches of haiku, a crown of sonnets, an ode, a little number on the Spurs, and the contest poem.

P&PC: Bunches of haiku indeed. One hundred twenty of them, in fact, in a poem that was subsequently described as a “mighty endeavor.” What compelled you?

LB: Admiration for Yosa Buson. Some people are moved to write by happiness, others by envy or resentment. For me it's usually admiration, which is why I feel so lucky to have been writing about the Blazers this year. They're such an easy team to pull for. Their good-humored approach to the game, their lack of hubris—what's not to like?

P&PC: Does your approach to poetry change when you write with a specific topic in mind (the Blazers), or for a particular audience (the Blazer's Edge reader)?

LB: I always pretend I'm writing for people who are more or less like me. Flawed but polite. When I'm writing for Blazer's Edge, I do allow myself to try things I might not otherwise. For example, "The Assistant Coach," is a pretty brazen Fernando Pessoa rip-off. That's something I wouldn't normally do, but there's something about inserting basketball references that can save an otherwise bad idea.

P&PC: For example?

LB: For example, well, every poem I've written for the site. I think it has something to do with anti-poetry, the way one generation of writers can say the same things about janitors or ink cartridges that a previous generation said about roses. Those dislocations can be beautiful.

P&PC: Why the sign-on “St. Bayno” and not “Lucas Bernhardt”? Is St. Bayno to Lucas Bernhardt like Slim Shady to Marshall Mathers?

LB: It's a tribute to Bill Bayno, a good coach.

P&PC: What’s it like being a co-poet laureate?

LB: Throughout the season we've had a supportive, non-competitive relationship. Having a co-laureate is a mixed blessing for me. On the one hand, it's great to have such a generous partner, someone who always has nice things to say about what I've written and who can pick up the slack whenever—and it's often—I'm slacking off. On the other, I feel totally outclassed by him. He's a much more complete blogger than I am. He writes all sorts of interesting posts, including a recent one about finally seeing a Blazers game with his wife (they live in Milwaukee). He also is a lot better at commenting on and recommending others' posts. I'm more of a silent participant in the site, outside of the poetry. I didn't have a login until the poet laureate contest, even though I had been reading Blazer's Edge for a long time.

P&PC: Have you gotten any endorsement deals?

LB: Nope.

P&PC: How did your training at the Iowa Writer's Workshop prepare you for this responsibility?

LB: The Workshop is an amazing program, but it's hard to say exactly why. I suppose working closely with so many great writers broadens a person's scope—assuming one is willing to pay attention to what others are up to.

P&PC: In a post-election comment on the blog, you outed yourself as a workshop-trained writer and confessed to circulating the finalist poems to your friends and peers. What sort of reactions did they have?

LB: Most of them had a lot of fun reading the poems and commenting. Naturally, those who didn't never brought it up. Some people admitted they had no idea which poem was mine, and others thought they knew but were wrong. Generally, people seemed to like the idea of posting poetry where people who don't generally follow contemporary poetry might read it.

P&PC: Are there any plans to have you read at the Rose Garden Arena?

LB: No—what a terrifying idea! I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fly. I get the feeling that elements within the (Blazer) organization are aware that Portland is an atypical sports market. That said, trying to appeal to the eccentric side of the audience would probably slow things down. The Rose Garden is all about amplifying the loud, fast, superhuman spectacle of pro basketball.

P&PC: Hmmm....You could call it a poetry slam dunk.

LB: Maybe if it involved being shot out of a cannon reading a poem, and culminated in a dunk...then maybe.

Last Voyage for the Keeper of the Hubble

for John Grunsfeld

And as Atlantis opens up its door
to float him into space, and as he glides
in his bee-suit across the telescope’s sides
how will the stimulus seem to him—or,
as the shuttle opens up its bays,
will the housing market, or Iraq,
or Octomom be enough to bring him back?
What does genocide look like from space?
Here to fix a thing he can’t redo,
will the pebble below him leave him blinded?
Can the heavens make him single minded?
As he floats, I’ll be floating too,
me in my bee-suit wondering why
we’ve been built as we are but still can fly.