Poetical Boom

Last week to publicize its goods & services Reynolds Corp., new housing division of Reynolds Metals Co., gave a dinner in Manhattan for some 90 editors, reporters and writers. Playing hosts were little, jovial President Richard Samuel Reynolds and a platoon of major and minor Reynolds executives. Subject of the many speeches was the ''Reynolds Specification House" (TIME, Sept. 2). Starting last year Reynolds offered to furnish most of the materials and equipment needed to build a home. Reynolds engineers take the plans of client's architect, draw up specifications for factory-fabricated units, which are sold through local dealers, assembled by local workmen. Reynolds supervises the job, will even arrange for financing.

None of this was news, but the story of the Reynolds dinner last week made the front page of the august New York Times. For more than that no pressagent ever asked. First, President Reynolds buttered up his guests. "Your presence here tonight, ladies & gentlemen, is the best evidence I have yet seen as to the certainty of an impending building boom." declared the onetime tobacco man. "You must know that we men of business never have and never can create a boom. . . . It remains for the writers of the world to create the enthusiasm necessary to move men in mass. . . . The trouble with America is that the Stephen Fosters of the present generation have not been singing of home. That is why 10,000,000 trained artisans are walking the streets of America still unemployed. . . .

"Now, just a word as to the practical side of poetry. . . . As we men of business have done our best to improve, protect and beautify the home, we look to our writers to . . . bring back to the home all of the romance of our forbears."

Then, instead of quoting Rhymester Edgar Guest, President Reynolds launched his poetical boom with three stanzas of verse composed in collaboration with two newsworthy U. S. poets, Joseph Auslander (No Traveller Returns) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning wife, Audrey Wurdemann (The Seven Sins). First stanza, "fabricated" by Mr. Reynolds, who usually devises his rhymes while shaving:

Build me a home; I am lonely, Lonely for a chimney and cat. I've been about and I've found out Life's too big for a flat.

Second stanza by Joseph Auslander:

Build me a home; I am hungry For the bark of a dog in a lane, For the sight of a light in a window at night And the song of a roof in the rain.

Third stanza by Audrey Wurdemann:

Build me a home in a garden With my window flush with the lawn Where life overflows on the heart of a rose Where birds may wake me at dawn.

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