Motherhood Quote by Robert W. Service

Service is tossing a match into the tinderbox of literary snobbery: don’t write “poetry,” write what sells. The barb works because it flips the usual hierarchy. “Poetry” is the sanctified temple art; “verse” is the workmanlike craft people actually read, recite, and remember. Service, a poet who became wildly popular by telling punchy, narrative stories in rhyme, is defending his lane while taking a swing at the gatekeepers who treat accessibility as a moral failing.

The intent is both practical and provocatively anti-romantic. He’s advising writers to aim for the ear and the crowd, not the seminar room. “The public wants verse” isn’t pure cynicism so much as a recognition that form is a social contract: rhythm, rhyme, and clear storytelling invite participation. Verse is portable; it survives in mouths, not just on shelves.

The subtext, though, is a sly critique of “poetry” as an identity project. When he says, “If you have a talent for poetry… don’t by any means mother it,” he’s mocking the overprotected, over-nurtured preciousness that can smother momentum. “Mother” here implies coddling: polishing sensitivity until it can’t take a punchline, a plot, or an audience.

Context matters: Service wrote during a period when modernism was professionalizing difficulty and building prestige around opacity. His own fame came from directness and performance-ready verse. The quote reads like a populist manifesto from inside the art form: stop auditioning for immortality and write something people want to carry home.