I was looking at the 1948 Hudson users manual to answer a pointless question about options. I noticed something more important on the last page.
A poem about courteous driving by Edgar Guest. Note the last line: Reprinted through courtesy of Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Company, and Mr. Edgar A. Guest.
Practicing what they preached. Not stealing the text without credit as Altman does.
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Earlier I noticed an apparently original poem at the end of a 1971 GenRad sound level meter manual.
Like beacons on a sea of silence
Life’s silver sounds invade the air:
The wind plays tunes upon the trees,
The stream sighs and from the mountain flees,
The rain’s beat, the phoebe’s call –
Ears were made for sounds like these.
Both poems were at the END of the manual, and both manuals had attractively designed covers.
Poets drove themselves out of business, just as journalists are doing now. Both failed to recognize the basic rules of physical and mental digestion. Attract with beauty, chew through the hard covering, eat and digest the fibers, finish with another dose of beauty.
A pleasant aftertaste sells the next usage, makes the eater or reader more likely to consult this flower or newspaper or manual the next time.
If you don’t package your product with ENTERTAINMENT it won’t sell and won’t digest.
Edgar Guest understood the proper function of poetry, and made money from his understanding. Modern “poets”, like modern “artists” and “musicians”, have forgotten their function. They seek grants from CIA to spread chaos instead of spreading knowledge and beauty.
