Crowd Pleasing Hockey Poems

Hugh Oliver is Editor-in-Chief, OISE Press.

There are two kinds of verse about sport: the semi-humorous, Robert
Service-like doggerel of baseball’s Casey and the uplifting, sometimes
unintentionally humorous stuff exemplified by Henry Newbolt’s “play
up, play up, and play the game.” Crowd Pleasing Hockey Poems falls
somewhere between the two: it is doggerel and many of the poems seek to
appeal to popular sentiment. With such unforgettable lines as “And
though we at times may appear as short-sighted, / We know, Hockey Mum,
you’re a hero unknighted, / WE REALLY APPRECIATE all that you do, /
The game is a winner, and MOM SO ARE YOU,” it seems as if these poems
have been compiled from a compendium of clichés and a rhyming
dictionary. If a poet could come up with a successful formula for
encapsulating sport in verse, no doubt he or she would achieve fortune
and fame. But this one isn’t it.