Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:40:36.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Business of Rhyming: Burma-Shave Poetry and Popular Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Mike Chasar
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay uses the example of the long‐lived and popular Burma‐Shave advertising campaign to argue that literary critics should extend their attention to the vast amounts of poetry written for advertising purposes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Burma‐Shave campaign—which featured sequences of rhyming billboards erected along highways in the United States from 1926 to 1963—not only cultivated characteristics of literary and even avantgarde writing but effectively pressured that literariness into serving the commercial marketplace. At the same time, as the campaign's reception history shows, the spirit of linguistic play and innovation at the core of Burma‐Shave's poetry unintentionally distracted consumers' attention away from the commercial message and toward the creative forces of reading and writing poetry. A striking example of popular reading practices at work, this history shows how poetry created even in the most commercial contexts might resist the commodification that many twentieth‐century poets and critics feared. (MC)

Type
Cluster on Textual Materialism
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 29 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor. “Lyric Poetry and Society.” Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Radical Social Theory 20 (1974): 56–71. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, Bruce. Paradise and Method: Poetics and Praxis. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Badaracco, Claire Hoertz. Trading Words: Poetry, Typography, and Illustrated Books in the Modern Literary Economy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Bart, Peter. “Advertising: Road Signs Will Stay.” New York Times 23 Feb. 1963: 13. Print.Google Scholar
Bell, Ed. “Do You Know.” Burma-Shavings Nov. 1933: 2. Print.Google Scholar
Brown, Bob. Appendix. Readies for Bob Brown's Machine. Ed. Brown, . Cagnes-sur-Mer: Roving Eye, 1931. 153–206. Print.Google Scholar
Bryant, Marsha. “Plath, Domesticity, and the Art of Advertising.” College Literature 29.3 (2002): 17–34. Print.Google Scholar
“Burmashave.” The Chuckle Corner. C. Harris, 1999. Web. 10 Oct. 2003.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. Advertising Copy Manual for “Burma-Shave” Road Signs. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1940. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. Burma Shave Jingle Book. No. 1. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1931. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. Burma-Shave Jingle Book. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1936. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. “Burma-Shave Signs along the Pacific Highway.” Burma-Shavings Nov. 1929: 1. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. The Burma-Shave Signs: A National Institution. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1938. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. “City Extremists Plan Drive against Roadside Property.” Burma-Shavings Nov. 1944: 1. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. Minutes of Directors' Meeting of the Board of Directors of Burma-Vita Company Held on the 8th Day of February at 4:00 a.m. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1962. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. Minutes of Directors' Meeting of the Board of Directors of Burma-Vita Company Held on the 14th Day of June 1951 at 9:00 a.m. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1951. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. Minutes of Directors' Meeting of the Board of Directors of Burma-Vita Company Held on the 10th Day of April 1952 at 9:00 a.m. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., Apr. 1952. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. Minutes of Directors' Meeting of the Board of Directors of Burma-Vita Company Held on the 12th Day of June 1952 at 9:00 a.m. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., June 1952. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. “1957 Burma-Shave Contest.” Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1957. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. “1930 Road Sign Copy.” Burma-Shavings June 1930: 2. Print.Google Scholar
Company, Burma-Vita. “No Rubbing.” Burma-Shavings Nov. 1930: 2. Print. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Corbett, Scott. “Too Late I Read.” Atlantic Sept. 1952: 82-84. Print.Google Scholar
“Could It Be Verse?” News 11 July 1955. Print.Google Scholar
Dugas, Gaille. “The Jingle Man of Burma Shave.” Saint Louis Post Dispatch Everyday Magazine 5 Oct. 1947: 1. Print.Google Scholar
Dunphy, Robert J. “A Lament for the Passing of the Highway Poets.” New York Times 28 June 1970: 344. Pro-Quest. Web. 17 Oct. 2009.Google Scholar
Easthope, Antony. Poetry as Discourse. London: Methuen, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Fiske, John. “Popular Discrimination.” Modernity and Mass Culture. Ed. Naremore, James and Brantlinger, Patrick. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. 103–16. Print.Google Scholar
Fleming, Roscoe. “Perk Up, Jack / The Rhymes Are Back.” Pageant Oct. 1946: 143-44. Print.Google Scholar
“For Ad Nostalgia / There Is No Lack; / Burma-Shave Signs / Are on Way Back.” Yakima Herald-Republic 9 July 1997: 5B. Print.Google Scholar
Fraser, James Howard. The American Billboard: 100 Years. New York: Abrams, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Gudis, Catherine. Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, Joseph. Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern U.S. Poetics. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Hejinian, Lyn. “The Rejection of Closure.” Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women. Ed. Sloan, Mary Margaret. Jersey City: Talisman, 1998. 618–29. Print.Google Scholar
Jensen, Emma P. Letter. Burma-Shavings Mar. 1935: 2. Print.Google Scholar
“Jingle Copy to Carry On for Burma-Shave.” Advertising Age 29 Sept. 1934: 19. Print.Google Scholar
Josephson, Matthew. “The Great American Billposter.” Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts Nov. 1922: 304-12. Print.Google Scholar
Laird, Pamela Walker. Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Lears, Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. New York: Basic, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Lewis, Sinclair. Arrowsmith. 1925. San Diego: Harcourt, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGann, Jerome. Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moretti, Franco. Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms. London: Verso, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Nelson, Cary. Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Odell, Allan G. Burma-Vita Company President's Annual Message. Minneapolis: Burma-Vita Co., 1953. Print.Google Scholar
Odell, Clinton. “No Salesmen—No Reason-Why Copy—Sales Increase.” Printer's Ink 3 May 1932: 17. Print.Google Scholar
Odell, Clinton. “President's Corner.” Burma-Shavings Apr. 1930: 1. Print.Google Scholar
Odell, Clinton. “President's Corner.” Burma-Shavings Nov. 1935: 1. Print.Google Scholar
Perloff, Marjorie. Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. “A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste.” Poetry 1.6 (1913): 200–06. Print.Google Scholar
Rainey, Lawrence. Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Rasula, Jed. “The Politics of, the Politics In.” Poetics and Poetic Value. Ed. Hallberg, Robert von. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. 315–22. Print.Google Scholar
“Rhyme on the Highway.” Ventura County Star 9 July 1997: D8. Print.Google Scholar
“Rhymes on the Road.” Time 21 Apr. 1947: 99. Print.Google Scholar
“Road Signs in Series, Presenting Jingles, Put Over Burma Shave.” Drug Trade News 15 Dec. 1930: 14. Print.Google Scholar
Rowsome, Frank Jr. The Verse by the Side of the Road: The Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles. New York: Penguin-Plume, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Rubin, Joan Shelley. “‘They Flash upon That Inward Eye’: Poetry Recitation and American Readers.” Reading Acts: U.S. Readers' Interactions with Literature, 1800-1950. Ed. Ryan, Barbara and Thomas, Amy M. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2002. 259–80. Print.Google Scholar
Scherman, David E. “Speaking of Pictures.” Life 2 June 1947: 14. Print.Google Scholar
Shortz, Will, ed. “The New York Times Crossword.” New York Times 30 Apr. 2003: E8. Print.Google Scholar
“Signs of Spring / Make Poets Rave, / Writing Signs / —(For Burma-Shave!).” Minneapolis Star 18 Feb. 1949: 6. Print.Google Scholar
Spahr, Juliana. Everybody's Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Stein, Gertrude. Everybody's Autobiography. 1937. New York: Cooper Square, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Van Wienen, Mark. Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Vossler, Bill. Burma-Shave: The Rhymes, the Signs, the Times. Saint Cloud: North Star, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
“We Still Pine for Those Rhyme Signs.” Forbes 22 Jan. 1996: 24. Print.Google Scholar
Zinsser, William K. “Goodbye Burma-Shave.” Saturday Evening Post 5 Sept. 1964: 65. Print.Google Scholar