Rhyme and Tide.

When I was a little boy, the world was a different place.

My late friend of fifty years, Fred, disagreed with me on this, but I think it was a better educated place. Maybe a smarter world. 

For instance, Life magazine, one of the best selling magazines of it day, once had an entire issue devoted to the Baltimore Colts football team with short funny poems of the type he was famous for by Ogden Nash. 

Nash also wrote this baseball poem. As a boy with pine-tar and horsehide in his veins, not ichor, it taught me a lot.

 

Line-up for Yesterday

A is for Alex
The great Alexander;
More Goose eggs he pitched
Than a popular gander.

 

B is for Bresnahan
Back of the plate;
The Cubs were his love,
and McGraw his hate.

C is for Cobb,
Who grew spikes and not corn,
And made all the basemen
Wish they weren't born.

D is for Dean,
The grammatical Diz,
When they asked, Who's the tops?
Said correctly, I is.

E is for Evers,
His jaw in advance;
Never afraid
To Tinker with Chance.

F is for Fordham
And Frankie and Frisch;
I wish he were back
With the Giants, I wish.

G is for Gehrig,
The Pride of the Stadium;
His record pure gold,
His courage, pure radium.

H is for Hornsby;
When pitching to Rog,
The pitcher would pitch,
Then the pitcher would dodge.

I is for Me,
Not a hard-hitting man,
But an outstanding all-time
Incurable fan.

J is for Johnson
The Big Train in his prime
Was so fast he could throw
Three strikes at a time.

K is for Keeler,
As fresh as green paint,
The fastest and mostest
To hit where they ain't.

L is for Lajoie
Whom Clevelanders love,
Napoleon himself,
With glue in his glove.

M is for Matty,
Who carried a charm
In the form of an extra
brain in his arm.

N is for Newsom,
Bobo's favorite kin.
You ask how he's here,
He talked himself in.

O is for Ott
Of the restless right foot.
When he leaned on the pellet,
The pellet stayed put.

P is for Plank,
The arm of the A's;
When he tangled with Matty
Games lasted for days.

Q is for Don Quixote
Cornelius Mack;
Neither Yankees nor years
Can halt his attack.

R is for Ruth.
To tell you the truth,
There's just no more to be said,
Just R is for Ruth.

S is for Speaker,
Swift center-field tender,
When the ball saw him coming,
It yelled, "I surrender."

T is for Terry
The Giant from Memphis
Whose .400 average
You can't overemphis.

U would be 'Ubell
if Carl were a cockney;
We say Hubbell and Baseball
Like Football and Rockne.

V is for Vance
The Dodger's very own Dazzy;
None of his rivals
Could throw as fast as he.

W is for Wagner,
The bowlegged beauty;
Short was closed to all traffic
With Honus on duty.

X is the first
of two x's in Foxx
Who was right behind Ruth
with his powerful soxx.

Y is for Young
The magnificent Cy;
People battled against him,
But I never knew why.

Z is for Zenith
The summit of fame.
These men are up there.
These men are the game.

When my tilted New York neighborhood was making the shift from vinyl to cassette tapes, my father, for my tenth birthday bought me a small Bell & Howell cassette player/recorder. The first cassette I bought was of Ogden Nash reading his poems.

I loved poems like these. They've informed me for more than half a century, even if they ain't Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Gerald Manley Hopkins. They make me snort.

The Turtle

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks

Which practically conceal its sex.

I think it clever of the turtle

In such a fix to be so fertile.

Fleas

Adam

Had'em

My wife, who is also a copywriter and I were talking this morning. When both in a couple are copywriters, one or the other or both usually has a manifesto hanging over their Mac and screaming to be written. Writing a manifesto is a bit like visiting your in laws. Driving there, you don't want to be stuck in traffic. But you don't want to get there too fast, either.

Manifestos today are like old gum on the underside of seats in a decrepit movie theatre. They're everywhere. They're usually disgusting. And you need to wash your hands if you come into contact with one.

I mentioned to my wife, with more of a dose of my usual pedagogy, that the greatest manifesto I've ever heard was by 

W. H. Auden. A poem called "This is the Night Mail." It was later, in 1988, turned into an actual manifesto for British Rail.

During my last twenty years in the business, manifestos have proliferated even more rapidly than Starbucks or CVS drug stores. And most of them are as predictable as travel delays. They are meant to inspire and uplift--to get a viewers' ass lifted off her chair, but so many seem to be laden with baggage of every manifesto that ever went before. So it's uninteresting. Tired. Not inspired.

I remember once twenty-five years ago being with a bunch of fellow creatives and being dressed-down by our ECD, Chris Wall. I will never forget his two sentences of all-purpose creative guidance.

"I'm not pissed," he said, "that the work sucks. I'm pissed that our level of ambition has started to drop."

If you spend a minute thinking about that, you'll realize it's a lesson for the ages. Like wise people say about fishing, "The fishing's always good; it's the catching that varies." I think we should think somewhat the same about our efforts. "Our work varies, but our drive to do something special never changes."

Before I'd build a wall, I'd ask what I was walling in or walling out, as Robert Frost wrote.

Before I'd write a manifesto, an email, a banner ad, a blog post or a simple joke, I'd ask if someone had seen it before. If I had something to say. And if I said it in a memorable way that made a promise and asked the viewer to do something or made them feel something.

Really, the struggle of life is a struggle against boredom. It's not just an unexamined life that's not worth living; a boring one ain't worth much either.

For no particular reason other than I love it, I'll end with another poem, this time by a guy I know nothing about called David McCord. It's as deep as a well.

Epitaph on a Waiter

By and by

God caught his eye.

If you want to catch someone's eye--which is much of the purpose behind advertising and marketing communications, try something different, funny, rude, thoughtful.  Actually, that too would make a good epitath, maybe for me.

Epitaph on a George

 Different, funny, 

 Rude, thoughtful.

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