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Worst (Published) Poems

Mercutio

Penultimate Amazing
M
Joined
Mar 31, 2003
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I am greatly enjoying the "favorite poems" thread--I love such things, as they not only expose me to the poems posted, but they remind me of how wonderful good poetry is. I always find myself browsing poetry collections after looking at that thread (or similar threads on munu, for instance), and finding some gem I had never seen before...

...This is not about those poems.

What are the absolute worst poems you have seen published? I would like to limit this to poems in actual books, not vanity press, if I could (but hey, live free or die), because the shock is all the worse there. Also, because that means that my own bad poetry on this forum is not fair game.

I have a nomination for "worst poem ever", but I wish to hold off on it for the time being, as I consider it the "nuclear option of bad poetry" and do not wish to kill this thread at its birth. I may be wrong, of course; there may be terrible poetry out there which makes mine pale by comparison. I certainly hope so.
 
Is it fair to cite William McGonagall? If so, the problem would be attempting to choose the absolute superlative among his many superbly awful poems. The Tay Bridge Disaster is, perhaps, the most famous of his effusions, but the rest of his oeuvre is a treasurehouse of badness. A personal favourite is The Loss of the Victoria, which included (among many many others) the following gemlike stanzas:

'Twas only those that leaped from the vessel at the first alarm,
Luckily so, that were saved from any harm
By leaping into the boats o'er the vessel's side,
Thanking God they had escaped as o'er the smooth water they did glide.

At Whitehall, London, mothers and fathers did call,
And the pitiful scene did the spectators' hearts appal;
But the most painful case was the mother of J. P. Scarlet,
Who cried, "Oh, Heaven, the loss of my son I'll never forget."


McGonagall was one of a kind - fortunately.
 
Oh my Ed that is horrendous. I love it! Just counting the iambs gives me a headache.



Mine is worse. (in my humble opinion).
 
I haven't been able to find the entire poem on such short notice; I'll look more tomorrow, but I think this nugget qualifies:

'So we leave her, so we leave her,
Far from where her swarthy kindred roam -- kindred roam
In the Scarlet Fever, Scarlet Fever,
Scarlet Fever Convalescent Home.'
 
Short notice? Hey, my threads have this annoying tendency of sticking around...you have all the time in cyberspace, LL...
 
Tom Bombadil? Like, the bit of doggerel about his bright blue jacket and yellow boots? At least it scanned.

I do love to kipple, but I agree that Fuzzy Wuzzy is not great. Anyway, it is indissolubly linked in my head with that childhood nonsense verse: Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. / Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. / Then he wasn't fuzzy./ Was he?

Mercutio, be a sport and give us a hint. What are the initials of your bad bad bad bad poet? Please?
 
You would not have heard of him. He is the author of a textbook in psychology, who apparently thought that a poem would be a great way of making a particular point. It is, perhaps, memorable...but not for any reasons on the "good" side of any continuum. And yet, there it is, in print, having survived the editor's pencil...

I am off to class now--perhaps I will have time to type it later.
 
Cleopatra - no, alas, though I like the idea. My current avatar is a tiny clip from Gustav Dore's depiction of the virgins of Jabesh-Gilead being carried off by the lusty surviving bachelors of the tribe of Benjamin, as per the Book of Judges. :)
 
Since LuxFerum nominated the fictitious Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings, let's have the work of the very real Paul Neil Milne Johnstone for whom it was a cover name:

The Dead Swans
The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.
They lay. They rotted. They turned
Around occasionally.
Bits of flesh dropped off them from
Time to time.
And sank into the pool's mire.
They also smelt a great deal.
 
Ok, ok, I have some time to kill. Here is my nomination for worst poem ever published. The author is Anthony Biglan, and he is not a poet. Why he chose to express this particular part of his book in "verse" escapes me. It is technically untitled, but is under the heading "What Is Behavior?", and claims to address that question, so I call it by that title. (I realize as I type this that I am actually writing this part just to keep from having to type out the poem itself...but I cannot put it off much longer...)

Dreaming, singing, drinking,
walking, talking, winking,
sailing, wailing, bailing,
taking notes, and flailing.

Wondering and wandering,
laundering and pondering.
Thinking of an old friend,
mixing a fine blend.

Running, heaving,
sighing, leaving.
Belching, throwing,
blowing, sewing.

Picking up sticks,
getting out of a fix.
Passing gas,
thinking of a glass.

It's behavior
if you can do it.
Doesn't matter if
no one knew it.



*ahem*

Kinda makes ya pine for the good old dead swans...
 
The Spider, by Francis Saltus Saltus
Then all they feculent majesty recalls
The nauseous mustiness of forsaken bowers,
The leprous nudity of deserted halls -
The positive nastiness of sullied flowers.

And I mark the colours yellow and black,
The fresco thy lithe, dictatorial thighs,
I dream and wonder on my drunken back
How God could possibly have created flies!
 
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