Worst (Published) Poems

[Mercutio]

Wow, that is......wow.


Do Steve Miller Band lyrics count?

Bad song lyrics deserve their own thread. Or perhaps their own forum. Somewhere far from here. Very very far, like maybe some parallel universe.



MacArthur park is melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing pouring down...

 

[GroundStrength]

Don't remember the poet but...

There was an old woman who lived under a hill,
and if she's not gone she lives there still.

 

[bruto]

Don't remember the poet but...

There was an old woman who lived under a hill,
and if she's not gone she lives there still.

That's a nursery rhyme. It's not that bad, either. It makes little children laugh.

 

[JamesM]

MacArthur park is melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing pouring down...

I am now entirely unable to get the Richard Harris version of this out of my head.

I won a local poetry competition when I was 12. Alas, I fear it was not published.

 

[JamesM]

Hunted war criminal Radovan Karadzic has a new book of poetry out. Disappointingly, the Beeb does not provide an example of his poesy - fortunately, PBS provides some past hits. Let's see what it's like:

But I can't stand the sight of you you file of scum
You file of snails
Well hurry up in your slime
Because if I can turn my words into thunder
I can turn you into a pool of stagnant water

Um, perhaps it loses something in the translation. I'd say "don't give up the day job", but...

 

[DragonLady]

I give you Margaret Cavendish; Duchess of Newcastle:

Nature's Cook

Death is the cook of Nature; and we find
Meat dressèd several ways to please her mind.
Some meats she roasts with fevers, burning hot,
And some she boils with dropsies in a pot.
Some for jelly consuming by degrees,
And some with ulcers, gravy out to squeeze.
Some flesh as sage she stuffs with gouts, and pains,
Others for tender meat hangs up in chains.
Some in the sea she pickles up to keep,
Others, as brawn is soused, those in wine steep.
Some with the pox, chops flesh, and bones so small,
Of which she makes a French fricasse withal.
Some on gridirons of calentures is broiled,
And some is trodden on, and so quite spoiled.
But those are baked, when smothered they do die,
By hectic fevers some meat she doth fry.
In sweat sometimes she stews with savoury smell,
A hodge-podge of diseases tasteth well.
Brains dressed with apoplexy to Nature's wish,
Or swims with sauce of megrims in a dish.
And tongues she dries with smoke from stomachs ill,
Which as the second course she sends up still.
Then Death cuts throats, for blood-puddings to make,
And puts them in the guts, which colics rack.
Some hunted are by Death, for deer that's red.
Or stall-fed oxen, knockèd on the head.
Some for bacon by Death are singed, or scalt,
Then powdered up with phlegm, and rheum that's salt.

 

[Mercutio]

Oh, that's simply delicious, DragonLady!

 

[ranson]

Hmm. I could nominate the entirety of Emily Dickinson. I've always hated every single bit of her work. I mean, get out of the attic and get a life, or kill yourself and stop depressing the rest of us. I particularly hate this:

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

 

[Kiless]

Hmm. I could nominate the entirety of Emily Dickinson.

Heh, I just had to take over a class today where they were studying her work. Most of the students said they 'loved her poems but had no idea what they meant'.

Okay, I remembered this one - David Williamson in his play 'Dead White Males' has a character who recites the 'so far unpublished Geralton feminist lesbian writer of ethnic Egyptian origin, Sophie Tsalis.' Tsalis is a writer who apparently 'accepts Helene Cixous' position that language is saturated with patriarchial binary opposites (male / female, mind / body,... logical / emotive) which inevitably privilege the male term, thus making it impossible for women to communicate their "reality" within this irretrievably male discourse.'

So, in creating a new female language, Williamson gives you Tsalis - who describes this poetry as a 'subversive intervention and interrogation of the phallocentric dominant discourse'.

You big.
You ugly.
You poor dick.
You stupid dick.
Why? Why? Why?
Why you shout?
Zwee.
Zweeebub.
You think you smart but you dumb.
I smarter.
Someday.
Someday soon.
Just wait.
Zweee.
Zweeesome.
Zweesee.
Zweebub.
Zweebub Vorgone.
I smart.
Just wait.
Ziggly zweebub, Ziggly Zukoff.
No more Zukoff for you Zweebub.
Sickly ickly dickly - Zuckoff yourself.
And swallow.
No more swallow from Ziggly.
Not more nothing. Never.

(this may be bending the rules a little - but it is indeed published....)

 

[ranson]

That is surely a contender. My eyes aren't bleeding, but they're close.

 

[Floyt]

There are some shockingly bad things out there by (tadaaa) Leonard Nimoy. I browsed a lil' poetry booklet of his once, flies were dying in midair while passing over it. One example I found on the web:


I love you
not for what
I want you to be
But for what you are

I loved you then
For what you were
I love you now
for what you have become

I miss you
And not only you

I miss what I am
When you are here...



Go Vulcan weltschmerz.

 

[mummymonkey]

McGonagall once wrote a poem about soap:

You can use it with great pleasure and ease
Without wasting any elbow grease;
And when washing the most dirty clothes
The sweat won't be dripping off your nose
You can wash your clothes with little rubbing
And without scarcely any scrubbing;
And I tell you once again without any joke
There's no soap can surpass Sunlight Soap;
And believe me, charwomen one and all,
I remain yours truly, the Poet McGonagall.

Astonishingly, the soap company paid him a fee of two guineas. Heartened by success he wrote this in reply:

Gentlemen you have my best wishes, and I hope
That the poem I've written about Sunlight Soap
Will cause a demand for it in every clime
For I declare it to be superfine.
And I hope before long , without any joke,
You will require some more of my poems about Sunlight Soap.
And in conclusion, gentlemen, I thank ye-
William McGonagall, Poet, 48 Step Row, Dundee

He never heard back.

 

[Batman Jr.]

Here's an original "worst poem":

The dog, it crept up my back.
That was okay, but I was looking for my racqu-
Et that was missing and I fount it.
The dog bit me and I fell and hit
It. It broke.
That's such a joke.
I was looking for it and then destroyed it.
I would have had a better chance of using it now if I didn't look for it.
Destruction.
Love of the racquet.
Amen.

 

[hodgy]

Originally Posted by Abdul Alhazred :
"Fuzzy Wuzzy" by Rudyard Kipling.
http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/841/


What?!

It's not one of Kipling's best but not his worst and Kipling was an exceptional wordsmith. There is a great deal of skill and a good ear for language in that verse - it is technically very good. I think you should withdraw your nomination!
__________________

Abdul - please recind or support your argument. Kipling does not deserve a mention in this thread...

 

[bruto]

Here's an original "worst poem":

The dog, it crept up my back.
That was okay, but I was looking for my racqu-
Et that was missing and I fount it.
The dog bit me and I fell and hit
It. It broke.
That's such a joke.
I was looking for it and then destroyed it.
I would have had a better chance of using it now if I didn't look for it.
Destruction.
Love of the racquet.
Amen.

I thought I had posted a reply to this, but it must have disappeared, timed out, or something. Anyway, I think intentionally bad poetry is probably cheating, though it can be very amusing too, especially if it's done by someone who knows how to do good stuff. I heartily recommend Noel Coward's Spangled Unicorn, containing the works, biographies and photographs of a selection of bad English poets, all of whom are, of course, Coward himself.

Also, Dylan Thomas's essay "How to be a Poet, or The Ascent of Parnassus Made Easy," which traces the development of a few modern poetic types, including the immortal lines:

A cornucopia of phalluses
Cascade on the vermilion palaces
In arabesques and syrup rigadoons;
Quince-breasted Circes of the zenanas
Do catch this rain of cherry-wigged bananas
And saraband beneath the raspberry moons.

That same poet becomes more politically aware with age, and comes out with:

After the incessant means-test of the conspiratorial winter
Scrutinizing the tragic history of each robbed branch,
Look! the triumphant bourgeoning! spring gay as a workers' procession
To the newly-opened gymnasium!
Look! the full employment of the blossoms!

That's collected in Quite Early One Morning, by the way.

 

[Dr Adequate]

I think Dylan Thomas deserves a little nomination himself for How Soon The Servant Sun

How soon the servant sun
(Sir morrow mark)
Can time unriddle, and the cupboard stone
(Fog has a bone
He'll trumpet into meat)
Unshelve that all my gristles have a gown
And the naked egg stand straight...

 

[Wudang]

As the owner of a copy of The Stuffed owl
Colley Cibber:
" Tho' rough Selingenstadt
The harmony defeat,
Tho' Klein-Ostein the verse confound;
Yet, in the joyful strain,
Ascaffenburgh or Dettingen
Shall charm the ear they seem to wound"

James Grainger:
"Of composts shall the muse disdain to sing?
Nor soil her heavenly plumes? The sacred Muse
Nought sordid deems, but what is base; nought fair,
Unless true Virtue stamp it with her seal.
Then, planter, wouldst thou double thine estate,
Never, ah!, never, be asham'd to tread
Thy dung-heaps"

 

[Tricky]

Both my wife and I occasionally write poetry, and both of us have been published in minor (like high-school) collections. But once, being young and innocent, Ms. Tricky fell for that scam where they say "send us your poems and we'll select the best to publish." The scam is, of course, that they make you buy the book at about $50 before you can get published. But , as I say, she didn't know any better and shelled out the bucks.

True to their word, the "publishers" sent her the book with her poem in it, along with every single feculent piece of drivel that any poetaster with fifty bucks sent to them. I've looked through that book, and it is truly tragic and comical how many people think that they can write.

So does that qualify as "published"? I can post some real doozies from that book.

 

[Cleopatra]

So does that qualify as "published"? I can post some real doozies from that book.

No need cheri. You see, we haven't recovered yet from your lame limericks in those flame wars where you got ruthlessly spanked.We can't take any more of your material. (----> notice this word old-Tricky )

 

[epepke]

I think that Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793 - 1835) wins the title here.

Six published poems, all terrible, and two of them became famous.

The first famous one started all the bushwah about immigrants to America being pilgrims:

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England

"Look now abroad--another race has fill'd
Those populous borders--wide the wood recedes,
And town shoots up, and fertile realms are till'd;
The land is full of harvests and green meads."--BRYANT
The breaking waves dash'd high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches toss'd;

And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o'er,
When a band of exiles moor'd their bark
On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted, came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;

Not as the flying come,
In silence and in fear;--
They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amidst the storm they sang,
And the stars heard and the sea:
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free!

The ocean eagle soar'd
From his nest by the white wave's foam
And the rocking pines of the forest roar'd--
This was their welcome home!

There were men with hoary hair
Amidst that pilgrim band:--
Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood's land?

There was woman's fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth;
There was manhood's brow serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?--
They sought a faith's pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trode.
They have left unstained, what there they found--
Freedom to worship God.

The other you'll recognize from the first line:

Casabianca

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.

The flames roll'd on...he would not go
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He call'd aloud..."Say, father,say
If yet my task is done!"
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.

"Speak, father!" once again he cried
"If I may yet be gone!"
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames roll'd on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death,
In still yet brave despair;

And shouted but one more aloud,
"My father, must I stay?"
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud
The wreathing fires made way,

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And stream'd above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound...
The boy-oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea.

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part;
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.