Much as been said about the deplorable poetry, and the deplorable lack of it, in Canadian culture. The ivy-twined critics mourn the fact that what poetry there is must try to flourish in a few small, sickly, and financially undernourished weedy periodicals, read only by connoisseurs of the obscure, and totally ignored by the Masses.

These myopic critics have missed the mark. Their narrow and rather fuzzy gaze has focussed only on what are known as literary poets–poets who write for people who read–and has thus overlooked the great bulk of Canadian poetry. This lamentable mistake stems in turn from a more grievous one: the attitude that Canada is a literate nation.

This, as anyone will affirm who has ever done Gallup Poll interviews, been a door-to-door salesman, or lectured in a university, is erroneous. The majority of Canadians neither read nor write. Consequently, the real Canadian poetic tradition is, like that of the pre-Hellenistic Greeks or modern-day Arabian nomads, an oral one.

This does not mean to imply that the folk-poetry of Canada is at all primitive… Far from being in an elementary stage of development, folk-poetry has reached a stage of extreme subtlety and complexity. Drawing on the best English traditions for its material it is rich in symbolism, and sophisticated in syntax and rhythm. It is, like the art of the Middle Ages, communal and anonymous; but this must not stop us from paying tribute to the creativity of the most productive and influential minds in Canada–in spite of those spurious, furious, and lichen-covered intellectuals who have damned their art with the epithet “singing commercial.”

Since there may be some confusion in the mind of the reader, it is necessary to say at this point that the term “folk-poetry” only applies, properly, to what is vulgarly called the Radio singing commercial. The Television singing commercial, which at first appears to belong to the same genre, is in reality a form of highly stylized ritualistic drama, and derives from quite other sources (although the two have, as it were, the same ends in view)…

The material is so diverse, and of such vast quantity, that it strikes one at first as an immense Augean Stable of words. The task of organization is made more difficult by the unfortunate influence of the CBC, which has terrorized even the most poetic stations, and forced them to intersperse the poetry with news broadcasts, music, and even programmes, thus shattering some of the longer poems into fragments and destroying their total effect. However, this tendency is happily disappearing. Soon there will be whole stations devoted to nothing but folk-poetry…

…a few examples from the principal schools should suffice to convince even the most stubborn and unfeeling of sceptics. First, of course, there is the Cola School. Its founder was the great but shadowy figure, the Master of Coca, who wrote in mystic aphorisms, of which only two have come down to us: “The Pause that Refreshes”, and, “Have a Coke”. Their meaning is a trifle obscure, but none can deny their stark beauty and their economy of form. Following in his footsteps, the Pepsi poet, without doubt one of his pupils, contributed those two well-known lyrics: “Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot”, and “Be Sociable–Have a Pepsi”. (The Coca influence is obvious in the latter.) The Pepsi work shows greater complexity of form, evident in the line, “Stay young and fair and debonair”, in which the internal rhyme and the carefully-chosen vowel sounds are designed to delight the ear of every listener. There is more difficulty in the work of the 7-Up man. He combined traditional elements with a touch of modern negativism in that stirring and emphatic lyric, “Nothing Does It Like 7-Up”…

The lilting lyricism of the Cola school is hardly every present in the radical and somewhat romantic Cleanser Movement. The prevailing symbolism here is one of Removal: in every instant, Dirt is sacrificed…by the archetype of the Cleanser. This archetype appears in various forms, but is readily recognizable to the discerning. Take, for instance, two quite separate examples. First:
               Get Ajax
                    (bum bum)
               The Foaming Cleanser
                    (bub-a-bub-a-bum bum bum)
               Wash the Dirt
               Right down the drain
                    (bub-a-bub-abub-a-bum).
In this free-verse fragment, the Cleanser is actually named (with the adjectival epithet “Foaming”: one is reminded of “Ox-Eyed Hera” in the Iliad. The Dirt is also specifically indicated. Notice, by the way, the rather abstract refrain–probably a corruption of some previously meaningful phrase, now obscured by time).

In our second example, the archetype is present in a less distinct form:
               Florient
               The instant-action air deodorant
                    (No wick, no wait, no waste)
               Kills room-Odour fast
               Just one quick spray,
               Have air smell flower-fresh the easy way,
               Get instant-acting Florient.

The form, obviously, is lyric: but the content is dramatic. Here, the Cleanser is designated by a multiple epithet, a folk-memory, no doubt, of his mythological status as a vegetation god and an air-spirit. The refrain (“No wick”, etc.) has surprisinglyl remained in word form, though the meaning is no longer extant…

One last poem will serve to illustrate the degree of abstraction, the freedom of form, and the consequent intensity of feeling which may be reached in folk-poetry. Its author was undoubtedly a genius of the highest order…
               NYMPH: Lump-dum-da-dum, da-dum-da-da…
               SHEPHERD: (alarmed) What was that?
               NYMPH: I take Bromo for fast relief…
               SHEPHERD: (even more alarmed) You do WHAT?
               NYMPH: I said
                            I take Bromo for fast relief…

Here the poet is…fitting his words into an ancient question-and-answer pattern almost Trope-like in form, but embodying in his obscurely symbolic words and Dadaistic sounds all that is unquestionable modern. The Freudian sequence of though, beautiful in its idiomatic simplicity, has obvious death-wish undertones.

… (Anyone) with the true aesthetic sense, now that the merit of the folk-poem has been indicated to him, will no doubt spend many hours with his ear glued to the radio, blissfully wallowing in the genuine culture of Canada. In spite of the Canada council, in spite of the Crest Theatre and Irving Layton, in spite of the tastelessness of the meagre critics, the folk-poet rises supreme. The Twentieth Century is his age; and it is his profound eloquence which moulds the soul of the Canadian people.

84:1 pg.9-11 (1960)

« Back to Notable Contributors