That’s right, only twenty-six more shopping days until “Bad Poetry Day.” How do you plan to celebrate the big day? Me, I plan to craft some really bad poetry; I mean, how hard can it be?
Now I believe that, in order to truly understand and appreciate bad poetry, it is imperative to first pay a visit to what is generally considered to be great poetry.
As reported by strandmag.com, Merriam-Webster indicates that poetry is “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.” Hello! That pretty much sums-up Rule of Three’s mission statement.
Strandmag.com then goes on to provide a list of “The Ten Best Poems of All Time,” which appealed to me, because some of the other options I had upon Googling, “Great Poetry” were “100 Great Poems,” “The 36 Most Famous Poems Ever Written in the English Language,” “The 32 Most Iconic Poems in the English Language,” and “31 of the Best and Most Famous Short Classic Poems of All Time.” Being a fairly lazy researcher, I opted for “The Ten Best. . .,” because, you know, that list had fewer poems than the others. I would have preferred to review, “The Three Best Poems Ever Written,” but Google didn’t provide me with that option. By the way, “36,” “32,” and “31” - how random are those numbers? I mean, I get “100” and “10” (thanks, Dave Letterman!), but, did the editors of those other lists simply begin compiling a list, and stop when they exhausted their personal intellectual capacity? Much like a game of musical chairs?
In any event, the list of “The Ten Best Poems of All Time” includes:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers (Emily Dickinson) - apparently about birds, although the word “bird” appears only once among the sixty-nine words in the poem, and is capitalized, so it must be about a specific bird - maybe Sesame Street’s Big Bird?
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot) - this one begins, “April is the cruellest month,” which I think I’ve heard quoted in some context, but, I didn’t read the entire poem, because it included four hundred six lines (contained in five different sections, totaling an estimated 3,654 words) of prose. During my quick scan (and count of lines) I noticed use of the word “carbuncular,” which is defined as “afflicted with or resembling a carbuncle,” which, as you know is “a painful localized bacterial infection of the skin and subcutaneous tissue that usually has several openings through which pus is discharged.” Man, that T.S. Eliot certainly had a way with words.
Still I Rise (Maya Angelou) - packed in the middle of this, more easily-digested poem is this stanza:
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Oh, Maya! It’s not exactly a dirty limerick, like, “There once was a man from Nantucket. . .,” but reading it might make a longshoreman blush (just to be clear, I’m not hawking cosmetics intended for dock-workers).
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (William Shakespeare) - I see what he was doing here: this was Shakespeare’s attempt to meet girls. Well-played, Willie, well-played.
O Captain! My Captain! (Walt Whitman) - this one is indeed a cool poem, and given that it was written in tribute to Abraham Lincoln, cooler still.
The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe) - not to be dismissed as simply another bird poem, the classic line, “Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” appears five separate times, and the beginning of the poem is pretty strong too: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary. . .”
Do not go gentle into that good night (Dylan Thomas) - the advice Thomas offers here is the opposite of “Not with a bang, but a whimper,” which, ironically, first appeared in another poet’s work: T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” - and, no, I didn’t read that one either - I suspected it may be another lengthy piece, and I simply didn’t have the energy for it. Perhaps this poem is the reason why so many older folks can be quite surly, given Thomas’ exhortations.
[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in] (E.E. Cummings) - ironically, although some believed that Cummings intentionally signed his name in lower case, as an expression of humility, apparently that was not the case - rather, he dabbled in “unconventional orthography” in his poems and other works - no, “orthography” has nothing to do with birds - it is “. . .a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.” I can report to you that, merely attempting to replicate the punctuation attached to the title of this poem required a bit of keyboard searching. . .and, I’m not convinced that I got it right.
Power (Audre Lorde) - this one is quite dark, apparently penned in response to a police killing of a young black boy - it includes the phrase, “. . .and lined her own womb with cement to make a graveyard for our children.” Dark, right?
The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost) - Frost’s classic poem ends with, “. . .Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” A fine way to conclude this superficial review of great poetry, I believe - this excerpt is truly sublime. And now, on to some truly bad poetry. . .
It’s actually pretty easy to locate bad poetry - take this one as an example:
I might have suggested an alternate title: “Ode to Public Transportation,” but otherwise, I think we can agree that this one belongs in the stable of bad poetry. Here’s another sampling for you:
Now, rather than a poem, this could have simply been an angry tweet. What makes it especially troubling from a poetic standpoint is that the poet attempted to deploy the classic rhyming tool (and, not in a good way - I mean, “sucks” and “guts?” What the hell is that?). I plan to appeal to the Poetry Society of America (founded in 1910), and seek to revoke this woman’s poetic license.
And, this one truly is “The Perfect Love Poem”:
I fear that, some night soon, I’ll wake up screaming, because this next poem is playing in an endless loop in my mind:
This one could have been entitled, “Ode to a Household Appliance”:
Remember Merriam-Webster’s definition of poetry highlighted above? Do you think this next one qualifies as poetry, based upon that definition?
Well, I think that’s quite enough inspiration for me. I think I’m ready to solo - here goes:
Coffee Cup on the Desk
by Bill Southern
A stack of papers here,
another stack over there.
The computer monitor commanding
a prime spot, demanding
attention.
A coffee cup with lukewarm coffee,
threatening to splash all over the papers.
That’s why stainless steel travel mugs
were invented.
How’d I do? Do you think this one is worthy of unveiling on August 18th? It’s probably a good idea to develop a back-up option or two - you know, bench strength. Alright, I’m on it:
Between Dogs at the Moment
by Bill Southern
Early-morning walks around the block.
Cleaning up puddles on the carpet.
Getting nipped while removing her from the bed.
Having to chase her down,
running free in the neighborhood.
Barking at nothing outside.
This is why I’m Between Dogs at the Moment.
Heartwarming, no? Let me try one more:
Trois
by Bill Southern
Un - ca commence.
Deux - ca continue.
Trois - ca se termine.
Ou est Francois?
I think this one is also indisputably bad poetry, but I felt that publishing it in French might make it appear particularly pretentious, thereby angering the reader even more.
Well, that’s my body of work for August 18th. Perhaps you are planning submissions of your own. If “Carpe diem!” (“Seize the Day!”) was the clarion call for the Dead Poets Society, perhaps the Bad Poets Society would embrace, “Approach with Caution” as its mantra.
“Approach with Caution,” all ye purveyors of really bad poetry.
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Good one Bill. As an aside, according to Google Translate (which means it must be correct) Approach with caution = Approchez avec prudence, in French, this might add a bit of flavor to your post.
There is a lot of low hanging fruit on this topic if one chose to do some work, which I am not. So I am going with an old reliable, or at least rememberable.
There was an old challenge - create a four line sonnet and include the word Timbuktu.
The first offering;
A morning walk we did take
Through the meadow and by the lake
When we smelled the morning dew
It reminded us so of Timbuktu
The second offering;
Me and Tim a hunting went
Found some ho’s in a tent
They was three and we was two
So I bucked one and Timbuktu