Bad Poetry, Get Some Here, Leave Some Here

Cafe Society
1

This thread was inspired by the Abbottabad Poem thread.

I’m taking this from a book called Illustrated Library of Favorite Song printed in 1873, so no living poet’s feelings can be hurt:

Here is a poem called Song

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
Prithee, why so mute?

Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move,
This cannot take her:
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The Devil take her!
Hmmm, now that I look at it again, it’s not so bad. But check out who wrote it:

Sir John Suckling.

Anybody else want to try?

2

Oh freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee, my froonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!

Douglas Adams

(No one said it couldn’t be intentionally bad poetry…)

3

As Dorothy Parker is reputed to have put it:

I’d rather fluck my Wasserman test
Than read of poetry the Edgar Guest

4

I think the poem in the OP is awesome. I think I have no idea of what good or bad poetry is.

5

Much truly bad poetry - the kind on which poets build very small and localized reputations - turns out to be withheld from google or the wider web. You get shunted to the “snippet view” section in Google Books. It’s as if the poets wrote in a kind of in-code, and were afraid the stuff might fall into the wrong hands.