# Incredibly bad poetry that was popular in its day for some reason **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 4, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135 "2013-06-04T17:52:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/41 "2013-06-05T19:19:28Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > The cause of the 20th-century total collapse of the poetry of the English language must surely lie at the door of the aesthetically fraudulent literary movement which enshrined T.S. Eliot as a master. Eliot’s attempts at high-brow verse are in fact unfathomable, inartisic pedantry. > > Here are the first few lines of an effort I was exposed to in college: > > GERONTION > > \*Here I am, an old man in a dry month, > Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain. > I was neither at the hot gates > Nor fought in the warm rain > Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, > Bitten by flies, fought. \* > > How many people here know what “the hot gates” refer to? Those he saw a certain 2005 movie don’t count. > > Also, I have for over 40 years been trying to find someone who can tell me what “the salt marsh” was. The word “cutlass” and historical juxtaposition with “hot gates” brings Salamis to mind as an educated guess, especially if one discovers that “sal” is Greek for salt. Alas, Wiki informs us that “amis” in Greek means “in the midst of” and so “Salamis” roughly means “surrounded by salt (water)”. Maybe know-it-all Eliot, who could read innumerable languages (even if he could write decent poetry in none of them) was aware of a secondary definition for “amis” meaning “marsh.” Online English to Greek dictionaries have not helped. I get the “hot gates”; the fighting in the rain might refer to the Battle of Rain in the Thirty Year’s War. During the Civil War there was a Battle of Saltville, which gets its name from salt marshes in the area. But, yeah, I’m just guessing. I’ve read a number of studies of Eliot’s work, and while I still like the Wasteland, the Hollow Men and Prufrock, a lot of it shows the impenetrable influence of his mentor, Ezra Pound, whose work rivals Finnegans Wake in its obscurity. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/42 "2013-06-05T19:50:05Z")
Here’s one that I just love; as mentioned above, it’s fantastic for children: [Robert Service](http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/138)’s immortal [Cremation of Sam McGee](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15360) — \*There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee - \* I positively long to moil for gold … not to mention visit the marge of Lake Lebarge. ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/43 "2013-06-05T19:50:41Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Katz’s Deli in NYC has a sign that says “Send a salami to your boy in the Army.” I love that it’s supposed to rhyme. With a Noo Yawk accent, it does. ([Case in point](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWhhoySpevw).) ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/44 "2013-06-06T00:17:39Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Except perhaps for William McGonagall. If you can genuinely love “The Tay Bridge Disaster” then you still might not be a sack of uncultured swine but you probably need some psychiatric help. [Watch this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRKxzL1plKk) epic version and then say that. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/45 "2013-06-06T01:15:35Z")
> [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](#): > > [Watch this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRKxzL1plKk) epic version and then say that. 😃 That was indeed magnificent! 🙂 But it’s magnificently _funny_, which I maintain a poem about a tragic catastrophe that killed nearly a hundred people is not supposed to be. You might well love it as a hilarious unintentional self-parody, but that’s not what I was talking about. Come to think of it, McGonagall must have had some balls to publish something as ludicrously, howlingly clunky as that poem within a few months of the actual tragedy. More than a century later we just see it as funny, but I imagine that at the time many mourners perceived its ridiculous hamhandedness as gratuitously adding insult to injury. Even now in 2013 a lot of us would probably still not enjoy reading such an unintentionally ludicrous poem about 9/11, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/46 "2013-06-06T01:26:08Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > That was indeed magnificent! 🙂 But it’s magnificently _funny_, which I maintain a poem about a tragic catastrophe that killed nearly a hundred people is not supposed to be. You might well love it as a hilarious unintentional self-parody, but that’s not what I was talking about. > > Come to think of it, McGonagall must have had some balls to publish something as ludicrously, howlingly clunky as that poem within a few months of the actual tragedy. More than a century later we just see it as funny, but I imagine that at the time many mourners perceived its ridiculous hamhandedness as gratuitously adding insult to injury. Even now in 2013 a lot of us would probably still not enjoy reading such an unintentionally ludicrous poem about 9/11, for example. You have a point about it being a trivialisation of a tragedy but Billy Connolly’s reading is so heartfelt that he _almost_ gets away with it (the snow helps). I get the impression that McGonagle had _ENORMOUS_ self-belief. Either that or he had decided to live his whole life as a parody by then. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/47 "2013-06-06T19:04:22Z")
Oh, man. My mother had me memorize “The Owl Critic” when I was about 8, and have me recite it for ‘lucky’ visitors. And decades and decades later it still clutters my mind: “Who stuffed that white owl?” No one spoke in the shop The barber was busy and he couldn’t stop… (I’ll spare you the rest.) ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/48 "2013-06-06T20:52:01Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > Here’s one that I just love; as mentioned above, it’s fantastic for children: [Robert Service](http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/138)’s immortal [Cremation of Sam McGee](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15360) — > > \*There are strange things done in the midnight sun > By the men who moil for gold; > The Arctic trails have their secret tales > That would make your blood run cold; > The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, > But the queerest they ever did see > Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge > I cremated Sam McGee - \* > > I positively long to moil for gold … not to mention visit the marge of Lake Lebarge. Trivia: It’s actually [Lake Laberge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Laberge). Why Service didn’t just say ‘on the verge of Lake Laberge’ is a mystery. As an Alaskan I grew up with Service’s poetry and loved it. We had a collection on our bookshelf for as long as I can remember. “A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon; The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-time tune; Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew, And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.” It devolves into a gunfight, and: “Then I ducked my head and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark; And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark. Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew, While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that’s known as Lou.” ---
**Author:** ![limegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/82dd89/32.png) [@limegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/limegreen)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/49 "2013-06-06T21:37:02Z")
As a middle school teacher, I can keep a class mesmerized with “Little Orphant Annie” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee”. As a child, my mother made me memorize “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight” and other long, expressive poems that my kids would be horrified to have to read. There was one about ‘The antiseptic baby and the prophylactic pup’ or some nonsense like that. Shall have to go google that… ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/50 "2013-06-06T21:47:57Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Or his soul-mate, [Kahlil Gibran](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran). Between the two of them, they destroyed more minds in the late 60s than all the drugs in the world. Haven’t been to many weddings of not very religious people lately, have you? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/51 "2013-06-06T22:04:32Z")
> [@limegreen](#): > > There was one about ‘The antiseptic baby and the prophylactic pup’ or some nonsense like that. Shall have to go google that… Heh. Actually, that Guiterman poem would be quite relevant in today’s antibacterial germophobic culture. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/52 "2013-06-06T22:28:53Z")
In high school we had to memorize and recite a poem. Being an odd child, I chose _[The Bench-Legged Fyce](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-bench-legged-fyce/)_, by Eugene Field. A fyce is a small hunting dog, also known as a ‘feist’. > [@](#): > > He wuz long in the bar’l, like a fyce oughter be; > His color wuz yaller as ever you see; > His tail, curlin’ upward, wuz long, loose, an’ slim - > When he didn’t wag it, why, the tail it wagged him! > His legs wuz so crooked, my bench-legged pup > Wuz as tall settin’ down as he wuz standin’ up! My mother had a 3-book set of his poetry, which I inherited. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/53 "2013-06-06T22:37:01Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > [_wanders off singing Longfellow’s [Psalm of Life](http://www.potw.org/archive/potw232.html) to the tune of My Darling Clementine, to get rid of the taste of Tay Bridge_] “Clementine” also scans to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Therefore, I guess “Psalm of Life” does too. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/54 "2013-06-06T22:41:12Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Trivia: It’s actually [Lake Laberge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Laberge). Why Service didn’t just say ‘on the verge of Lake Laberge’ is a mystery. As an Alaskan I grew up with Service’s poetry and loved it. We had a collection on our bookshelf for as long as I can remember. > > “A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon; > The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-time tune; > Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew, > And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.” > > It devolves into a gunfight, and: > > “Then I ducked my head and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark; > And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark. > Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew, > While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that’s known as Lou.” Everyone I know loves Robert Service. Is his stuff considered “bad poetry”? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/55 "2013-06-06T22:58:18Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > Pretty dull, and seemingly homoerotic in theme, although I do recall from the college text that Quarles’ work was devotional, so the “Beloved” of this poem probably refers to Christ. Fun fact I recall from library school: Until the late 19th Century, the vast majority of printed matter in the English-speaking world was religious literature. An impression one rarely seems to get from the books from those centuries that people still read, except perhaps for _Pilgrim’s Progress,_ if anyone still reads that. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2013, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/56 "2013-06-06T23:05:37Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > The cause of the 20th-century total collapse of the poetry of the English language must surely lie at the door of the aesthetically fraudulent literary movement which enshrined T.S. Eliot as a master. Eliot’s attempts at high-brow verse are in fact unfathomable, inartisic pedantry. Well, Eliot’s one of those poets beloved of English profs and lit majors, one of those who is widely known just because he is a poet everybody with any pretense to an education knows they’re supposed to know. I don’t think he ever was a **popular** poet in the sense that Edward A. Guest and Robert Service were popular poets. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2013, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/57 "2013-06-07T00:11:09Z")
Is it threadshitting to drop a decent poem, just to remind that there still is such a thing, into this bowl of doggerel? [Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by James Agee & Samuel Barber](http://youtu.be/fOuspMGPC2s) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/58 "2013-06-07T01:30:46Z")
I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned the poems that Lewis Carroll parodied (unless you count [Hiawatha](http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/hia.html)), but the _Alice_ books are full of parodies of the (bad, and often didactic) poetry that was popular in the day, such as Robert Southey’s “[The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_How_He_Gained_Them),” parodied by Carroll as “[You Are Old, Father William](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William).” ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2013, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/59 "2013-06-07T03:20:36Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Joyce Kilmer’s _Trees_ is universally known and pretty bad. I’m assuming his tragic death in WW1 has something to do with it’s popularity. > > I have no problem imagining it being recited by Henry Gibson. I’ll do you one better, [sung by Bob from _Sesame Street._](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW1SY09cQhQ) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2013, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135/60 "2013-06-07T06:37:17Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Will I embarrass myself by admitting that I’ve always liked _Little Orphant Annie_ ? It has to be read aloud, with considerable emphasis on each “Don’t! Watch! Out!” Big favorite of mine, too, at age 4 or so. It was in a book with this illustration: [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/\_vkBLkocveCY/TAbv6aZqIcI/AAAAAAAAAT8/xuTRYBXjgeU/s1600/IMG.jpg](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vkBLkocveCY/TAbv6aZqIcI/AAAAAAAAAT8/xuTRYBXjgeU/s1600/IMG.jpg) and skeert me ‘bout to pieces, but I loved it jus’ th’ same! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-bad-poetry-that-was-popular-in-its-day-for-some-reason/660135.md?page=4)