William Henry Drummond, now. We "took" him in school in the '60s, by God, and were supposed to take him seriously. This was the "Canadian content" that the school board so desperately craved, so we took him, along with Bliss Carman and a few other hopeless schmaltz-mongers.
I remember my English teacher reading these out loud. She was thirty-seven years old, unmarried, and dressed like a frump. Her interpretations of the poems in her breathy, hesitant voice were awkward, but what can you expect? I seem to have a dim memory of hearing Drummond himself perform some of these tasty verses, but I may be wrong; he may have died in 1872 or something.
It used to be OK, even desirable, even necessary to "poke fun" at French-Canadians, to say that they had litters of children like puppies, that they were crude and ignorant and illiterate. If you said that now, they'd blow you to kingdom come.
A bunch of raving separatists, aren't they? But by yiminy, dey make dern-toonderin'-good cornbeef avec moutard. Meantime, here's some awful Canadian non-history. I offer this one only because it's one of the few Drummond poems that is less than 6,000 lines long. I have a theory as to why the lines are numbered: to give you hope. If you knew it would be over in 40 lines, you could somehow hang on and keep from screaming. Then again, maybe it was like hypnosis. . . with each. . . line. . . taking you. . . deeper. . . and deeper. . .
. . . into a coma.
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