the worst poem you have ever read

[YesNo]

I like the imagery in all of Williams’ poetry.

I don't know much about Williams' poetry, so I really can't complain about it.

However, as far as imagery goes, I suspect I would get more out of shuffling a tarot deck and interpreting what pops up in a Celtic cross spread than I would in trying to make sense out of the images that are supposed to be in poetry.

I never could figure out what he meant by the lines

between the wet
pavement and the gutter

I thought it had some sort of symbolic meaning until I saw the photograph, and then I realized that he was just literally describing what was in the photograph (although there still may be some symbolism to it).

Me neither, but you are probably right about there being nothing more to it than what a literal interpretation would offer.

[YesNo]

I like "The Red Wheelbarrow". Why (I wonder) does "so much depend" on it? However, I also like the concept looking not for merely bad poems (they are myriad), but for famous poems one dislikes. I once had an argument with my mother about one of her favorite poems, "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manly Hopkins.
....

My side of the argument went something like this:

Lay off the "dappled things", Gerard. What's wrong with plain, unvariegated color? Also, why compare the spots on a trout to a technique in painting, if we want to wonder at God's beauty? Shouldn't the comparison be made the other way around? Isn’t the artist’s brush a poor imitation of God’s handiwork?

I love "Spring and Fall", although when I read it as a young boy I had no idea what it meant, and didn't even have the slightest notion what "unleaving" referred to. In fact, I thought that “unleaving” meant “staying”. I liked the sounds, though.

But "Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)" seems to me to be the worst of Hopkins - cloying, cute (who knows how), and worshiping diversity and dappling just because they can be sentimentally admired in alliterative, clever lines.

Hopkins’ talent -- the skill with words, the alliteration -- is wonderful. However, I can't really buy "...For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow..." I suppose one can picture this image, if one tries hard enough, but it is forced. I can't imagine myself looking at the sky and saying, "Hmmm, looks like a brinded cow." Or if I did say that, it would be a bit like seeing "duckies" or "horsies" in the clouds.

I can’t really blame my Mom for liking “Pied Beauty”. She had freckles. But Wallace Stevens once said that, “sentimentality is a failure of feeling.” I like dappled things as much as the next person, but it seems mere sentimentality to glorify the strange over the ordinary, the fickle over the constant, and stippling over a strong, steady stroke of the brush.

"Pied Beauty" doesn't bother me. I like the sound of it even though I have no clue what a dappled thing or a brinded cow might be, nor do I care to find out. My favorite Hopkin's poem is the one that starts "Margaret, are you grieving?"

But "brush"? A poem is made out of words, not paint. It is about sound, not images.

Having said that I don't like many of the limericks that Edward Lear wrote even though they have an acceptable sound to them. I would consider them among the worst, but famous, poems I have ever read. Of course his poem about the owl and pussy cat was brilliant.

[YesNo]

I never saw that before, but it's no worse than "The Leaves of Grass", and many people think that's good poetry.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/d..._textonly.html

I had to look up Max Ehrmann's "Desiderata". I don't recall hearing it before, but it seems like reasonable advice. I agree that Leaves of Grass would put me to sleep faster, but then it is longer.

[YesNo]

I don't have a single poem in mind, but the type of poem I really hate is the sort of pretentious, free verse drivel that is only produced by people (I think) that are trying too hard to create 'art'.

I love hating that kind of poetry, but what are you going to do when someone you know offers you something like that hoping that you will be the first person to truly appreciate it?

[Poetaster]

I love hating that kind of poetry, but what are you going to do when someone you know offers you something like that hoping that you will be the first person to truly appreciate it?

I hate loving that kind of poetry. It's a good question, I honestly don't know. Knowing me, in all my typical Britishness, I'd likely not say I hated it to their face. I don't like what that says about me however.

[cacian]

The worst poems I have ever read were ones written by myself. I posted a couple of them on LitNet, and they got the comments they deserved. I've pretty much given up poetry now for short stories.

108 can you post here to read? thanks.

[cacian]

*

I don't have a single poem in mind, but the type of poem I really hate is the sort of pretentious, free verse drivel that is only produced by people (I think) that are trying too hard to create 'art'. The sort I mean is the sort that would go something like this:

El Notche del cabre!!!!?!

I walked into the moonlit night

And met a woman who was getting her sustenance from bins

she said
'I can taste rainbows when I hold my nose in the air
and point downwards
into abysses
like

Dante's peak,
and with glass bottom chocolates'

i wondered if
(Cui dono lepidum novum libellum)

I had invented time

And thought I could see all of creation

at the end of a

beer soaked night.

?

Trampoline
dreams

I
me
I

!

in a shopping market I

there was a bang and

(Arma vamque cano)

buscuits.

yep this reminds of poem made up of punctuation.
like this:

....
::::::::
)(*
^%$£
~?????
!!!!!
'

[Ecurb]

"Pied Beauty" doesn't bother me. I like the sound of it even though I have no clue what a dappled thing or a brinded cow might be, nor do I care to find out. My favorite Hopkin's poem is the one that starts "Margaret, are you grieving?"

But "brush"? A poem is made out of words, not paint. It is about sound, not images.

.

No doubt Hopkins' poems all sound great. My comment about brush strokes referred to Hopkins line "For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim". "Stippling" is a technique in painting in which the painter produces "dappled" (spotted with color or light) things with points or very short slashes of paint. I just thought it strange that Hopkins, who quit writing poetry to become a Jesuit priest, would compare the handiwork of God to that of a human painter, when it seems to me the human painter is trying to imitate the Master.

"Spring and Fall (to a young child)", which I referenced, is the Hopkins poem that begins "Margaret are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving..." As a child, I liked the sound of the poem so much (it was also one of my mother's favorite poems) that I memorized it, although I was unaware that "goldengrove unleaving" referred to the golden leaves falling from the trees in autumn. For years I thought "unleaving" meant "staying".

Please "Google" critical comments on Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees," as well as this piece on a great Robert Frost poem that is woefully misinterpreted by American educators:


Why High School Teachers Can’t Read Poetry by John Kilgore


http://www.thescreamonline.com/essay...01/poetry.html

Nice article. My high school teachers definitely tried to make me dislike "literary" novels, constantly talking about "moral themes" and such. Teaching is a tough gig, though. If high school kids can identify with the individualistic glory of taking "the road less traveled by", perhaps that will spur them to look more deeply both into the poem and at the diverging roads, and discover that the travelers "Had worn them really about the same."

[YesNo]

No doubt Hopkins' poems all sound great. My comment about brush strokes referred to Hopkins line "For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim". "Stippling" is a technique in painting in which the painter produces "dappled" (spotted with color or light) things with points or very short slashes of paint. I just thought it strange that Hopkins, who quit writing poetry to become a Jesuit priest, would compare the handiwork of God to that of a human painter, when it seems to me the human painter is trying to imitate the Master.

I don't know what was going through Hopkin's mind when he stopped writing poetry to became a priest. It doesn't make sense to me. But we can discuss theology in another thread.

What interests me about poetry is that some people think there are "images" in it. All I see in poetry are words and words imply sound and meaning. I don't see any images except by accident when the publisher puts in an illustration by the poem.

"Spring and Fall (to a young child)", which I referenced, is the Hopkins poem that begins "Margaret are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving..." As a child, I liked the sound of the poem so much (it was also one of my mother's favorite poems) that I memorized it, although I was unaware that "goldengrove unleaving" referred to the golden leaves falling from the trees in autumn. For years I thought "unleaving" meant "staying".

I also memorized the poem, but I heard about it first as an undergraduate. I do remember my mother reciting nursery rhymes. I don't think she knew who Hopkins was.

Nice article. My high school teachers definitely tried to make me dislike "literary" novels, constantly talking about "moral themes" and such. Teaching is a tough gig, though. If high school kids can identify with the individualistic glory of taking "the road less traveled by", perhaps that will spur them to look more deeply both into the poem and at the diverging roads, and discover that the travelers "Had worn them really about the same."

Here's something I didn't like about John Kilgore's article. He wrote: http://www.thescreamonline.com/essay...01/poetry.html

A discovery one makes periodically as a college teacher is that the rare student who declares himself a poetry-lover can be more of a problem than the professed poetry-hater. Both declarations suggest the student has hardly an inkling of the vast range of different things that can be meant by the single term "poetry"; but the poetry-hater at least knows she doesn't know.

Here he is mistaken. The poetry hater does not know she doesn't know. She knows. And she's bored. That's worse than hate.

Considering the unpleasant sounding, deliberately meaningless horse manure I have read as poetry, that nonetheless gets praised as something great, I am tempted to think she shows signs of mental health. That same poetry hater probably loves, loves, loves movies and songs.

That's why I offered "The Red Wheelbarrow" as one of my candidates for the worst poem I have ever read. I have many others.

[Ecurb]

To each his own, YesNo. However, I will point out that Joseph Conrad wrote, "My task is to make you hear, to make you feel,and, above all, to make you see." I understand your distaste for "Red Wheel Barrow" if you don't like visual poems. That poem is a little like a black and white photograph with a glistening, red wheel barrow, in brilliant color, in the middle of it. Perhaps "so much depends" on the red wheel barrow simply poetically -- there would be no poem without it.

Many poems aren't dependent on visual images, but many are. Alfred Noyes writes in his Highwayman:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

The reader is transported to the barren, purple heath, looking out over the emptiness at the bright, twisting road, meandering like a swirling ribbon, as the movement of the clouds makes the moon appear to bob up and down like a small ship on a stormy sea. The swirling sounds of the introduction to the poem augment this image.

Think of other famous poems. Take Shelley's Ode to the West Wind

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing....

The simile comparing the leaves to ghosts adds to the sense of mystery and wonder at the West Wind, but it also creates a clear and dramatic visual image of the leaves scampering erratically across the ground, as if they had a mind of their own.

It is true that when Kingsley Amis was asked to give advice to a young novelist, he said, "Never mention clouds." Drama is essentially human -- and visualizing the setting is often peripheral to it.

I'm not sure why Hopkins quit poetry when he became a priest. I think he thought he was too busy to do both. I read a novel called "Exiles" about Hopkins quitting poetry, and then returning to it to write a long poem about some Catholic nuns exiled from Germany by Bismark. They were drowned off the English coast in a ship wreck. Hopkins died young a year or two after returning to poetry. Here's a link to the poem (warning: its long and difficult):http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173668

[desiresjab]

Then there's William Topaz McGonagall, poet and tragedian of Dundee, has been widely hailed as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language.
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/
try:
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/...river-of-leith
or
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/...ridge-disaster

The Tay Bridge Disaster may be his most noteworthy. Read it and see why.

Wow! You are right. This may be the worst poem (Tay Bridge). Incredible. I can just see him after the last revision, leaning back for a well earned smoke.

[PeterL]

Wow! You are right. This may be the worst poem (Tay Bridge). Incredible. I can just see him after the last revision, leaning back for a well earned smoke.

Yeah! Tay Bridge is amazing. And he probably thought it was good. I once tried to write a little bad poetry, and try as I did it didn't approach Tay Bridge.

[YesNo]

Many poems aren't dependent on visual images, but many are. Alfred Noyes writes in his Highwayman:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

The reader is transported to the barren, purple heath, looking out over the emptiness at the bright, twisting road, meandering like a swirling ribbon, as the movement of the clouds makes the moon appear to bob up and down like a small ship on a stormy sea. The swirling sounds of the introduction to the poem augment this image.

I don't see any image in that example. How many trees were there? What sort of clouds were in the sky? Did the road cut across horizontally or was it skewed somewhat? If you had an image, you would know all of this and much more.

What you have with a poem is more interesting. You have sound and meaning. An illustrator might add an image to the text, but the text itself is composed of words that are represented as sounds. The coding of it in a script is just a storage mechanism.

Or let's take the red wheelbarrow poem that I think is one of the worst poems I have ever read primarily because of the hype around it. If it contained images you would know how many chickens there were. You would know where the wheelbarrow was in the yard or what building it was against. You would know what shade of red it was. Any image would give you this visual information. Since you don't have that information, you don't have an image.

When it comes to visual information a picture is worth far more than a thousand words. And the information is delivered quickly.

I was at a used book store on Saturday. The owner had over 40 different editions of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam for sale. He told me that he had three times that many at the height of his collecting interest. Overall he estimated that there were a thousand editions of that poem. People would buy the texts not just for the words but also for the images that an artist would add, not the poet.

[Ecurb]

Pablo Picasso supposedly met an American G.I. who told him he didn't like modern paintings because they were not realistic. To illustrate his point, the GI showed Picasso a photo of his girlfriend. "My," said Picasso, "Is she really so small?"

Of course visual art provides an "image", while the reader of poetry must create his own image, based on the descriptions in the poem. "Ode to the West Wind" describes the skittering leaves, but the details of the terrain through which the leaves flee their imaginary enchanter are missing. In a sense, this makes poetry-reading a more "creative" endeavor than looking at snapshots. The images one "sees" are created from a collaboration of the poet and the reader. The serious reader is REQUIRED to imagine "skies of couple colour as a brinded cow", however unusual the image. Sometimes this works (artistically), sometimes it doesn't. In your case, Red Wheel Barrow didn't help you create a striking image; for a great many sophisticated readers, it does.

[YesNo]

I am almost tempted to look up "brinded cow".

There are many readers who visualize better than I do. But I assume any image that is visualized in the reader's mind is in the reader's mind and not in the poem.

It is not just poetry. Words do not form images whether those words are in a poem or a story or even on a map as a place name. Words take time to read. Images are immediate. Words use sound. Images use vision. I am almost tempted to say that words mean something or are about something while an image need not be.

Suppose you looked at a photograph and said, "There are a lot of nice sounds in that picture."

Do you have any other poems that would be good candidates for "the worst poem you have ever read"? I might as well add this one by Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Station_of_the_Metro I am just picking up famous poems that I think are overrated.

It does have a near rhyme between "croud" and "bough" which is the only thing that makes it interesting to me.