Sarah Binks

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All of the Characters in this Book are Fictitious Including the Authors.
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Sonnet.Then I have turned life's last descriptive page, And written "finis" to a somewhat unplanned tale, With here its moments of poetic rage, And there long prose of dubious avail, My friends will come and say, "He as a safe, Lo, count the leaves, in truth, 'tis noble, look.' All this accomplished in his single age.' " � And sigh, and reverently close the book:But from the multitude will come a few, Sweet sprightly souls who read not to enlarge Each chapter to heroic tome, nor view The title page as bright emblazoned. targe � But lovingly, to thumb each page anew, And chuckle at the doodles on the marge.
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CONTENTS.SONNET.CHAPTER X. CHILDHOOD AND PARLY YOUTH.CHAPTER XX. OLE,CHAPTER III. MATHILDA.CHAPTER IV. THE GRIZZLEYKICK SYMPHONY.CHAPTER V. WILLIAM GREENGLOWCHAPTER VI. GRANDFATHER THURNOW. CHAPTER VII. HERY WELKIN. CHAPTER VIII. THE DARK HOUR. CHAPTER IX. RECOGNITION AID SUCCESS. CHAPTER 3C. UP FROM THE MAGMA. CHAPTER XI. SARAH, THE WOMAN. L'ENVOI.
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INTRODUCTION:.IntroductionSarah Binks, the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan, as she is often called, no longer needs any introduction to her ever growing list of admirers. In fact, it may be asked why another book should be added to the already voluminous and continually growing literature which deals with the work of this great Canadian. We already know about her life � we know about her tragic death. We know about her early struggles for recognition and her rise to fame. We knew about the honors that were showered upon her, culminating finally in that highest award in the bestowal of the Saskatchewan people, the Wheat Pool Medal. But what is not known, or at least what is so often overlooked, is that quite apart form the Saskatchewan for which Sarah speaks, she was pre-eminently a poetess in her own right, that in a life so poor in incident and surrounded on all sides by the pastoral simplicity, if not actual severity, of theMunicipality of Willows, she developed a character so rich and a personality so winsome and diverse. There is too, a profoundpersonal philosophy which speaks to us quite apart from the sweep and beauty of the prairies with which she is associated. It is this theme which the Author has developed. It definitely strikes a new note.From Shakespeare's "England, my England," to a Saskatchewan wheat farm may seem to be a far cry. But that same patriotism, that same confidence and Joy in his native land, which is the heritage of all poets, is also Sarah's. And when she cries
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out in a sua don awareness of her own gumbo stretch, "The farmer is King." or when she sings in full throat, THE SONG OF THE CHORE, or hymns the joy of SPREADING TIME, or discusses with deep understanding standing but with impersonal detachment as in TO MY FATHER, JACOB BINKS'S, the fine economic adjustment between the farmer and the cut-worm, we know that she speaks for the Canadian West in the language of all poets at all times. It is this which has given her the high place in the world of literature and in the hearts of her countryman.But there is much more to Sarah Binks that being the Laureate of Saskatchewan. Sarah was not only the expression other day and age, she as also the product of her immediate environment. She Was the product of her friends, of her books, and of the little incidents which shaped her life. She was the product of the Grade School, of her neighbors, of Mathilda Schwantzhacker, of Ole, the hired man, of her grand-father the philosophical herbalist, of William Greenglow who taught her Geology, of Henry Welkin who took her to Regina. From all of these Sarah emerges as a character, as a personality, and above all, as a woman.It has been no light task to gather together the many threads of personal and literary influence and to reconstruct from them, as in fine needlepoint, a truer, more intimate picture of Sarah Binks than we have hitherto known. Sarah, on the larger canvass, as a national figure, loses nothing thereby. But for those who like to look beyond the poetry to the poetess, for those who would see beyond the high achievement the unfolding and blossoming of the poetic spirit, this new life of Sarah Binks has been written.
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There is an age in Western Canada which is fast disappearingbefore our very eyes; an age which began with the turn of the century and lasted at its best about thirty years, Sarah's dates, 1906 to 1929, practically define it. They were the halcyon days of Western Canada, the golden days of the dirt farmer. Itw>as anage sandwiched between the romantic West of the "cow country" and the West of drought and relief and economic experiment. It was a prosperous age for Saskatchewan, and such periods of prosperity and commercial expansion are always accompanied by literary and artistic blossoming. On a small scale the Golden Age of Pericles in Greece, or the Elizabethan age of England, finds its counterpart in Canada's fairest and flattest province. Already in brief historical perspective that age is beginning to take on an aura of romance. Sarah Binks was its artistic expression.Those most productive years of Sarah's also mark the high water mark of Saskatchewan's prosperity. The price of heat rose to fabulous heightd; clean eggs, not over throe days old, sold in the general stores at prices ranging all the way from twenty to twenty-six cents a dozen, whilst at the Willows and Quagmire elevators the classifications of both screenings and Durham, No.4, Smutty, were raised to No.3, Smutty. Liver also showed signs of a rise.To the west the frontier had been rolled back; the tumble-weed had yielded to the sow-thistle, the coyote had vanished from the plains, and with the disappearance of these great herds, his last source of Vitamin B gone, disappeared also the prairie Indian, a proud and picturesque figure in overalls and plug hat � swept away before the ruthless march of civilization. The land was open for wheat. No economic cloud marked the Saskatchewan horizon.
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Mortgage money could be had at any time for twelve percent, and the dry belt, which years later was to creep north and eastwards over a country already desiccated by prohibition laws, still lay in the heart of the Great American desert.It is claimed by sons writers that Sarah Binks sprang spontaneously from Saskatchewan's alkaline soil, that she was an isolated genius such as the ages have produced from time to time with no significance beyond her unparalled talent. With this view the Author takes exception. Sarah Binks was the product of her soil � her roots go deep. But more than that, she was an expression of her environment and her age. without Saskatchewan at its greatest, at its golden age, Sarah would have been just another poetess. Sarah was the daughter and the grand-daughter of a dirt farmer; she loved the soil and much of Jacob Binks' passion for another quarter section flowed in her veins. Her love for the paternal acres acres a real love, she believed in the rotation of crops, and in the fall, after the plowing was done, she spread the fertilizer with a lavish hand. "The Farmer is King.!", she cries,The farmer is king of his packer and plow, Of his harrows and hinders and breakers, He is lord of the pig, and Czar of the cow On his hundred and sixty-odd acres.The farmer is monarch in high estate, Of his barn and his back-house and byre, And all the buildings behind the gate Of his two-odd miles of barbed wire.The farmer is even Caesar of freight And tarriff and tax, comes election, And from then until then he can abdicate And be king on his own quarter section.The farmer is king, oh, the farmer is king,And except for his wife and his daughter,Who boss him around, he runs the thing,Come drought, come hell or high water.
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It is significant, too, that Sarah Binks should have seized upon Warden and Rockbuster's FIRST STEPS IN GEOLOGY and made it so singularly her own. Geology to her was the farm extended to the) outer world, to the larger life. Any other hook at that period of her life would hare left her cold. It is undoubtedly true, to quote Principal Pinhole, "If the benign fates which rule the lives of men had passed Willlam Greenglow in Geology II and had given him a supplemental in Maths II instead, Sarah's songs would not have been touched to the same extent. The binomial theorem as I understand it is by no means the same as the theory of crustal movements, and it is just because the one deals with rocks and the other has to do with figures without rooks, that the whole Neo-Geo-Literary school of literature would have been different by that much. In fact some other province might hare got the credit".*Sarah Binks has raised her home province of Saskatchewan to its highest prairie level. Unschooled, but unspoiled, this simile countrygirl has captured in her net of poesy the flatness of that great province, like a sylph she wanders through its bluffs and coulees, across its haylands, its alkali flats, its gumbo stretches, its gopher meadows;Hark! Like a mellow fiddle moaning, Through the reed-grass sighing, Through a gnarled branch groaning, Comes the Poet � Sylph-like, Gaunt-like, Poeming �And his eyes are stars, And his mouth is foaming.
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Thus, Sarah herself, in the divine frenzy. No wonder she iscalled the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan. Indeed she could hecalled much more. No other poet has so expressed the Saskatchewansoul. No other poet has caught in deathless lines so much of itselusive spirit, the baldness of its prairies, the alkalinity ofIts soil, the richness of its insect life.In presenting this new study of the life and works of theSweet Songstress the Author feels that be is filling a long feltwant. Much has already been written, much more remains to be written,but hitherto no such complete study of the life and character ofSarah Binks has been published. The papers which hare appeared frosttine to tine have been fragmentary, generally critical studieddealing with one phase of her life or with a group of poems, Specialmention must be made of the numerous papers of Horace P. Marrowfat, B.A.. Professor Emeritus of English and Swimming,of St. Midgets College; of Dr Taj Mahal, D.O. , of British Columbia;and to the Proceedings of the Ladies Literary league of Quagmire.These papers and publications have been of especial valuein the preparation of this book, and proper acknowledgements havebeen made wherever It was considered absolutely necessary.The Author also wishes to express his indebtedness to therecent work, GREAT LIVES AND GREAT LOVES by Miss Rosalind Drool,and to the publishers, Bunnybooks Ltd., for permission to quote therefrom. Miss Drool's intense and even Introspective searchings into certain phases of Sarah Binks' life have been of great interest, more especially since her own personal offer to pursue further studies "at considerable lengths."

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