Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often feels alien, as though we were recalling the memories of someone else. In the past, of course, we were someone else. As a kid I watched ridiculous amounts of television, which is why I remember the lyrics to the Green Acres theme. The same gift, if that’s what it is, helped me memorize yards of poetry, much of it first-rate – Eliot, Kipling, Yeats, Tate. But I also committed to memory many lines of doggerel and quasi-doggerel, especially when the poems in question were highly rhythmic, even singable. Take Robert Service:
“There are
strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic
trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern
Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that
night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
I defy you to read those last three lines and not want to sing them. I can’t remember how I learned portions of “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” whether in class or on my own. It helped that I liked
cowboy movies and the stories of Jack London. Moil (not to be confused with mohel)
is a verb meaning, the OED tells us,
“to toil, work hard, drudge.”
Service was
born in England, grew up in Scotland and emigrated to Canada at age twenty-one.
His timing was superb, as the Klondike Gold Rush started in 1896. Service wanted
to be a cowboy. He published Songs of a Sourdough in 1907. Besides “Sam McGee,” it includes his other greatest hit,
“The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” with the memorable opening line, “A bunch of the
boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon.” Service is no Eliot or
even a Kipling, but a handful of his poems are memorable and
entertaining, and complement my stride when I’m out walking.
Service was
born on this date, January 16, in 1874 and died on September 11, 1958 at age
eighty-four.
4 comments:
So, another 1874-born writer - along with Churchill, Maugham, and Chesterton. Not a bad year!
I memorized 'Sam McGee' 57 years ago in my freshman HS English class, courtesy of the Jesuits, who had included it in their English I readings book. I think it was the first poem we had to memorize.
I can remember most of it still: definitely 'memorable and entertaining' indeed.
Chris C
My 5th grade teacher used to read Service to us, especially Sam McGee. I loved it, and I'm sure that it played some small part in my lifelong love of poetry.
And one of the hills I'd die on is Green Acres; it can still make me weep with laughter. Growing up with Hank Kimball means you'll never be silly enough to expect much competence from the government.
Speaking of doggerel, I was surprised to have found out at various times that that two close friends of mine memorized "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" as youngsters. I was even more surprised when my own elderly mother began reciting verses from "Barnacle Bill", although not quite the obscene version my buddies knew.
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