Very Bad Poetry
3 journalers for this copy...
I spotted this while browsing at a local Barnes and Noble, and couldn't pass it up. It really is a collection of poetry that the authors (and a good many reviewers) have deemed Very Bad Indeed, and the examples are wildly entertaining - though I admit that as some of the poems appear as excerpts, I was tempted to hunt up the originals to see what I was missing! [I was pleased to find one or two poets here whose work I'd already been introduced to (very snarkily) by Edmund Pearson in his droll Queer Books, including J. Gordon Coogler's "Alas Carolina".]
Among my favorites: H. C. Bunner's "A Real Romance," in which a school-age girl threatens suicide to get revenge on a boy who had committed the crime of refusing to forgive her for laughing at him; her attempt is for show only, but sufficiently bloody to scare all the bystanders, including the boy - but the narrator of the poem concludes:
He is penitent, through and through;
And she - she is satisfied.
Knowing my sex as I do,
I wish I could add: She died.
Then there's the winner of the "most anticlimactic poem" award: Julia A. Moore's "The Grand Rapids Cricket Club":
When Mr. Dennis does well play,
His courage is full great,
And accidents to him occur,
But not much though, of late.
Moore has several other works cited here, and among her admirers she numbered Mark Twain, who found her work so unintentionally hilarious that he recommended it to friends. Perhaps to make up for the drab ending of "The Grand Rapids Cricket Club", many of Moore's poems were about tragic death of many varieties:
While eating dinner, this dear little child
Was choked on a piece of beef.
Doctors came, tried their skill awhile,
But none could give relief.
She wasn't the only one who liked morbid subjects; there are loads of accounts of death, often quite explicit. And burial places came in for their own treatment in the marvelously weird "On Visiting Westminster Abbey" by Amanda McKittrick Ros:
Holy Moses! Have a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brains lie here
Mortal loads of beef and beer...
There's a lot more truly awful poetry here - plenty of entertainment value in a rather slim book!
Among my favorites: H. C. Bunner's "A Real Romance," in which a school-age girl threatens suicide to get revenge on a boy who had committed the crime of refusing to forgive her for laughing at him; her attempt is for show only, but sufficiently bloody to scare all the bystanders, including the boy - but the narrator of the poem concludes:
He is penitent, through and through;
And she - she is satisfied.
Knowing my sex as I do,
I wish I could add: She died.
Then there's the winner of the "most anticlimactic poem" award: Julia A. Moore's "The Grand Rapids Cricket Club":
When Mr. Dennis does well play,
His courage is full great,
And accidents to him occur,
But not much though, of late.
Moore has several other works cited here, and among her admirers she numbered Mark Twain, who found her work so unintentionally hilarious that he recommended it to friends. Perhaps to make up for the drab ending of "The Grand Rapids Cricket Club", many of Moore's poems were about tragic death of many varieties:
While eating dinner, this dear little child
Was choked on a piece of beef.
Doctors came, tried their skill awhile,
But none could give relief.
She wasn't the only one who liked morbid subjects; there are loads of accounts of death, often quite explicit. And burial places came in for their own treatment in the marvelously weird "On Visiting Westminster Abbey" by Amanda McKittrick Ros:
Holy Moses! Have a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brains lie here
Mortal loads of beef and beer...
There's a lot more truly awful poetry here - plenty of entertainment value in a rather slim book!
Picked up from the book table at the convention, for exactly the same reasons Gory picked it to bring to London - it looked small, light, and interesting.
It'll probably be released somewhere further along on my travels.
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It'll probably be released somewhere further along on my travels.
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CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
Given to another bookcrosser at the Ottawa meetup.
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Given to another bookcrosser at the Ottawa meetup.
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A very nice Kiwi bookcrosser gave it to me while staying in Ottawa in her worldwide tour. Thanks! And good luck in your journey!
