Ship of Fools: The World's Worst Poet

Thread: The World's Worst Poet Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

The World's Worst Poet is a title not infrequently awarded to William McGonagall, a Scottish weaver (and erstwhile poetry reader) who said of himself, "The most startling incident in my life was the time I discovered myself to be a poet, which was in the year 1877."

The sobriquet is due to his ham-fisted scansion, his vocabularic choices, his total failure at metaphor, and ... well, you'll see.

His poetry is in large part concerned with historic events, mostly of the not-terribly-poetic sort, such as assassination attempts and railway disasters. Which can of course be done well; many a broadsheet ballad has been written about either topic. McGonagall's muse was not a broadsheet balladeer, however, but the more declamatory, didactic sort. Think Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" only without Longfellow's ability to rhyme, scan, turn a phrase, or know what to leave out. Especially the latter.

The 1879 collapse of the railway trestle at Tay (near Dundee) provides the matter for McGonagall's most famous poem, "The Tay Bridge Disaster." The first and final stanzas of this 59-line gem will serve to give you some idea of his poetic acumen:

quote:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

...

I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Wise words.

Any other McGonagall poetry people want to share? Any other "world's worst" poets?

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

I was thinking of drawing people's attention - if they din't know of it already - to The Stuffed Owl.

Time, space nor copyright do not permit of the very many gems within its pages, though a brief extract from the index may give some indication of its range;

Babylon, rightly served out, 101
Bagpipes, their silence regretted, 151
Bards, dead, common objects of the sea shore, 66
Beauties, well-baked, 5
Beaux, Irish, their grovelling minds, 194
Bedfordshire, departure for, imminent, 1
Britons. See under Angels

Also, interestingly, their selection includes no McGonigall - which just goes to show how much more bad verse there is out there.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

'Trains, rapture of catching'... methinks I must get hold of a copy of this.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Dundee has an annual McGonagall Supper - it starts with whisky and speeches, then pudding, haggis, neeps and tatties and finishes with soup. Assorted recitations throughout.

Posted by jrw (# 18045) on :

How about this poem:

Jesus is not just for christmas
by John Hegley

Posted by EloiseA (# 18029) on :

A personal favourite is the Sweet Singer of Michigan, Julia Moore, cruelly ridiculed by Mark Twain.

Best known for her long (seemingly endless) moving epic on the Great Fire of Chicago

The great Chicago Fire, friends,
Will never be forgot;
In the history of Chicago
It will remain a darken spot.
It was a dreadful horrid sight
To see that City in flames;
But no human aid could save it,
For all skill was tried in vain.

A line or two of her unsatisfactory verse always cheers me up. Which might be why doggerel outlasts so much serious poetry.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

And then there's The Deacon's Masterpiece by Oliver Wendell Holmes, with its memorable quote:

quote:
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundreth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by jrw:
How about Jesus is not just for Christmas by John Hegley

Anyone who can rhyme "tribal" and "eyeball" deserves at least a flyspeck on the wall of Poets Corner.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Eloise, that's delightfully horrid. A worthy American counterpart to McGonagall.

Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Dundee has an annual McGonagall Supper - it starts with whisky and speeches, then pudding, haggis, neeps and tatties and finishes with soup. Assorted recitations throughout.

D. has been suggesting for ages that would be better than Burns Night - although I don't think he realised that it would all be done backwards - as he puts it, if you're going to have bad poetry*, why not have really bad poetry?

[Devil]

* Sorry about that - he really doesn't like Burns (I confess I'm not a huge fan either).

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Dundee has an annual McGonagall Supper - it starts with whisky and speeches, then pudding, haggis, neeps and tatties and finishes with soup. Assorted recitations throughout.

Do they then walk across the Tay Rail Bridge?

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

There is, of course, the wondrous Pam Ayres:

"I am a dry stone waller.
All day I dry stone wall.
Of all appalling callings
Dry stone walling's worst of all".

But that is cleverly awful.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Dundee has an annual McGonagall Supper - it starts with whisky and speeches, then pudding, haggis, neeps and tatties and finishes with soup. Assorted recitations throughout.
Do they then walk across the Tay Rail Bridge?

Or march across the Broughton Bridge?

Posted by Amos (# 44) on :

There's a lovely story told about the Puritan poet George Wither being captured in the English Civil War, and sentenced to death--but spared, because one of the Cavalier Poets--Edmund Waller, or someone like that--said, 'While George Wither lives, I am not the worst poet in England.'

Posted by Amos (# 44) on :

The worst poet of the Middle Ages was, arguably, Orm, author of the Ormulum: 19,000 lines of idiosyncratically spelled bad verse. He had his own system of spelling. The verse is deadly. Many, many sheep died to provide parchment for Orm:
Forrþrihht anan se time comm
þatt ure Drihhtin wollde
ben borenn i þiss middellærd
forr all mannkinne nede
he chæs himm sone kinnessmenn
all swillke summ he wollde
& whær he wollde borenn ben
he chæs all att hiss wille.

Translation:
As soon as the time came
that our Lord wanted
to be born in this middle-earth
for the sake of all mankind,
at once he chose kinsmen for himself,
all just as he wanted,
and he decided that he would be born
exactly where he wished.

Twelfth century, East Midlands--I'm told they still speak in this fashion in the Diocese Southwell and Notts.

Posted by Ariston (# 10894) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Dundee has an annual McGonagall Supper - it starts with whisky and speeches, then pudding, haggis, neeps and tatties and finishes with soup. Assorted recitations throughout.
Do they then walk across the Tay Rail Bridge?
Or march across the Broughton Bridge?

Probably look at statues and avoid liquor. Speaking as a tourist to Edinburgh, I never even noticed the Prince Albert Consort statue, much less admired it.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amos:
The worst poet of the Middle Ages was, arguably, Orm, author of the Ormulum: 19,000 lines of idiosyncratically spelled bad verse.

To be fair, idiosyncratic spelling lasted well into the modern era.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
Speaking as a tourist to Edinburgh, I never even noticed the Prince Albert Consort statue, much less admired it.

Middle of Charlotte Square garden. Chap on a horse. Mourning Nation laying wreaths at foot of indeed very large granite plinth.

You'll have seen it in the distance but not thought Aha! Resting Prince Consort!

Posted by Amos (# 44) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Amos:
The worst poet of the Middle Ages was, arguably, Orm, author of the Ormulum: 19,000 lines of idiosyncratically spelled bad verse.
To be fair, idiosyncratic spelling lasted well into the modern era.

Noah Webster had nothing on Orm. Think: Mediaeval phonics indicated by doubling of consonants in odd places. That's his main interest to scholarship at present.

Posted by Alaric the Goth (# 511) on :

This is one of the worst poems ever, despite being by my favourite author, JRR Tolkien: Goblin Feet [Frown]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alaric the Goth:
This is one of the worst poems ever, despite being by my favourite author, JRR Tolkien: Goblin Feet

OMG. I have never doubted Tolkien's poetry is not of the same quality as his prose, but that's horrific.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Leonard Nimoy writes some pretty awful poetry, but it maybe slightly better than his singing.

[ 05. August 2014, 18:19: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alaric the Goth:
This is one of the worst poems ever, despite being by my favourite author, JRR Tolkien: Goblin Feet

You'll have come across Tinfang Warble, I expect. As the poem says, it's a hoot.

Posted by Ye Olde Motherboarde (# 54) on :

quote:
Originally posted by jrw:
How about this poem:

Jesus is not just for christmas
by John Hegley

Oh, Lord, save us, this is awful, simply awful

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :

A worthy contender for the title of 'The New McGonagall' is the legendary (to himself, and to an oddly devoted band of followers) C. John Taylor. He was an artist and poet who opened The Highland Arts Exhibition, an ambitiously-named gift shop on Seil Isle south of Oban, which operates as something of a shrine. You can even buy a poem on a tea towel!

It is worth visiting simply so that you can admire the sheer breathtaking hubris of the man who once wrote, "“Good poetry is a ladder upon which our thoughts can unhindered ascend to atmospheres uplifting, inspiring, regenerating far very far removed, from the ordinary often monotonous frequently demanding routine of daily experience.”

It is hard to find copies of his poems online, and alas, I cannot currently locate my own small volume. However, perhaps this small couplet will suffice:

quote:
Richard Burton’s blue eyes frolic
Insanely when he’s alcoholic.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

That is wonderfully bad.

Spasmodic Poets, thou shouldst be living at this hour! They came between the Romantics and the Big Victorians - floreat c 1840s. A leading light was George Gilfillan, who is described in Wikipedia as ' the friend and inspiration of William McGonagall'.

It's difficult to find any of his (or others of the ilk) online, but the opening lines of Night are available:

I sing of night - a dark yet noble theme*
Which on my spirit has for long years lain
Adopted as mine own in days of youth,
And now in manhood's still unfaded strength
Resumed in mood of earnest fantasy
And high endeavour, though at times my hope
Pales like a taper in the morning sun,
And a cold fear comes shriv'ring o'er my soul
Lest the new garland I would strive to fling
Upon the starry foreheads should decay,
And vanish as doth fleecy whisp of cloud
From the proud planets rising in the eve.

It's not as stridently bad as McGonagall, but somehow the image rises from those lines of the Reverend gentleman flinging leis quoit-like at disco queens in glitter make-up. There's an inexactness which is the true mark of the bad poet. That and a turn for turgid archaisms -

Spirit that stirrest in the leaves of night
Gleamest and wailest in the evening streams. Ibid.

In the following lines, for good measure, it twinklest, touchest, linkest and mixest.

*you feel there should be a 'y'ken' about there.

[ 11. August 2014, 09:33: Message edited by: Firenze ]

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
A worthy contender for the title of 'The New McGonagall' is the legendary (to himself, and to an oddly devoted band of followers) C. John Taylor. He was an artist and poet who opened The Highland Arts Exhibition, an ambitiously-named gift shop on Seil Isle south of Oban, which operates as something of a shrine. You can even buy a poem on a tea towel!

I love that place! Especially when there's a bus load of bewildered tourists being invited to admire the paintings and buy the CDs!

Alas! One bitter memory. We visited it when I was about 10, and I included a description in the routine "What I did in my holidays" essay on my return to school. And the teacher (Miss Jackson ) wrote "You are not supposed to make things up!" on my essay, and took marks off.

Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :

"The Stuffed Owl" sounds so good I've just ordered two copies off Ebay for poet friends for Christmas!

Posted by John Holding (# 158) on :

I'd nominate one James McIntyre, best known for a poem (well it sort of scans) whose first two (of several verses) run like this:

We have seen thee Queen of cheese,
Laying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze --
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the great Provincial Show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.

John

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Maybe it's got more to do with the kind of people I've known who admire it, but The Raggedy Man by James Whitcomb Riley has always struck me as particularly awful.

quote:
O the Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa;
An' he's the goodest man ever you saw!
He comes to our house every day,
An' waters the horses, an' feeds 'em hay;
An' he opens the shed—an' we all ist laugh
When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf;
An' nen—ef our hired girl says he can—
He milks the cow fer 'Lizabuth Ann.—
Ain't he a' awful good Raggedy Man?
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

Why do you think it's so awful? It puts me in mind of James Stephens' Bessie Bobtail.

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