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: 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!