The Best of Robert Service, by Robert W Service

[sophia_sol]

Reading Robert Service as a kid was what made me first realise I could actually like poetry. Before that I'd mostly been exposed either to children's-book doggerel, or poetry not literal enough for young me to yet have the skills to make sense of. (Also when I was a kid I was pretty rigid-minded about poetry having to have FORM and that freeform poetry was just prose you'd put weird line breaks into, so that also cut out my ability to connect with a lot of good poetry. (I mean....I will admit I still do kiiiiinda think that it's just prose with extra line breaks, I just don't think that that's a problem anymore))

Service's poetry, at its best, is snappy and satisfying, easy to follow, tells a story or says something interesting or funny, and has a good flow. A good poet to ease a poetry-dubious person into liking some poetry. Not all his poetry is him at his best, though, and at his worst he can be trite, sexist, racist, annoying, or tedious.

My bookshelf has over the years sprouted various books of Service's poetry, including this one. (There's multiple collections out there called The Best of Robert Service, btw, so for the sake of clarity: I'm talking about the 2001 McGraw-Hill Ryerson one.) Of course, even a "best of" collection won't necessarily remove the unlikeable elements of a poet's oeuvre, since the tastes of the editor will inevitably drive what's included.

So I like some of the poems in this collection, am mildly ok with others, and actively dislike a bunch more. So it goes! These days I don't consider Service my favourite poet as I would have when I was a kid/teen, but I still have a good deal of lingering fondness for him, despite his issues.

Comments

[pauraque]

A new one on me! Do you have a favorite poem by him?

[sophia_sol]

I think he's probably more well known in Canada than elsewhere, because it was his time in the Yukon (a Canadian territory) that inspired him to write a lot of his most well-known poetry. Canada is always excited when we can claim someone for ourselves!

I have a huge soft spot for his most famous poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee, which is the poem that first introduced me to him. It's a good example of the storytelling kind of poem he does. I memorized it as a preteen and I can still reel the whole thing off at a moment's notice. There's an illustrated edition published with pictures by Ted Harrison, which also elevate the poem to the next level. I adore Harrison's art in this book; if you google it you should find a few of the pictures, I think.

The Call of the Wild is a really lovely non-narrative poem by him that speaks to me in a number of ways....except for the really super uncomfortable reference to "the mongrel races" :/

[carmarthen]

OMG, me too! There's some stuff in Spell of the Yukon that really resonates with me (and yeah, "Call of the Wild," minus the racist bit).

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, I love Spell of the Yukon too. He's really good at capturing the feeling of loving a land and being captivated by being in it and a part of it even though it's hard work.