What is some of the worst poetry you have read?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Bad poetry really bothers me. In fact, I ought to write a Pit thread about how much I hate it. But that is not what this post is about. I am curious about what some of the worst poetry some Dopers have read, and if allowable, quote some of the more barf-worthy bits.

I write poetry a lot but it seems like it doesn’t take very long for it to get stale, and the more time that passes, the more I hate much of the poetry I’ve written in the past. But poetry seems a lot like art, in that much of it can be highly subjective. So a lot of times I feel that it is hard for me to judge whether a poem was a ‘good poem’ or a ‘bad poem’. To the poet, I suppose it could have been his or her Magnum Opus of poems, but everybody else sees it as barf.

2

I’ve never willingly read her, but I’ve heard Maya Angelou recited, and I find her pretty unbearable . . .

3

The worst poetry I have ever read is probably my own. :smiley:

4

Rod McKuen. I liked him when I was young and impressionable, but now… ick.

I used to take submissions for the high school literary art magazine, and the poetry of teenage girls is often so saccharine and lovesick that it sends you into insulin shock on sight.

5

A local newspaper here is very receptive to reader submissions; I don’t have a copy handy at the moment, but they typically have poems dotted throughout and they are universally excrable - usually some trite drivel about a lovely dog or on a teen angst theme.

6

I have a deep and personal hatred for all of the collected works of Helen Steiner Rice. I believe she may be an exception to my usual belief that book-burninng is always wrong.

7

I love bad poetry. I have started collecting it, and found that I don’t have much competition in the field. I will recreate one piece that I find particularly compelling. Please note that this is well out of copyright protection. To those few who already read it in a short bad poetry thread from earlier this year please forgive me.

And now for my choice of the worst poem ever I give you, “A Belgian Orphan” by Amanda McKittrick Ros.

Daddy was a Belgian and so was Mammy too,
And why I’m now in Larne I want to tell to you:
Daddy was a soldier and fought his level best
For both his King a Country, and I’ll tell you the rest.
Our home was snug and cosy and how happy we were all,
Until Daddy he was ordered to obey his country’s call. . . .

One day a short time after, a troop of Germans came,
While we sat around the table, playing a childish game;
Mammy was busy baking bread for all our tea,
When the door was flung wide open and in stepped Germans three.

One spoke to mammy saying, “Stay your labour for your kids,
Give to us all this bread! or we’ll stab your bony ribs!”
And raising high his glittering sword one cut off Mammy’s head,
Her body fell upon me, while her poor neck bled and bled!

Three shots soon followed after, and my dear wee brothers three
Fell dead across poor Mammy whose neck bled on my knee;
I screamed, “Oh sirs wee Hors is shot, and Buhn and Wilhelm too!”
Then on my knees I fell and begged they’d spare wee brother Dhu;

Just then they raised the little lad and threw him on the fire,
And wreathed in smiles they watched him burn until he did expire;
My poor wee sisters screamed and cried, and clutched dead Mammy’s hands,
When lo! they cut off baby’s head and also her wee hands.

Ah sirs, I begged, just kill me now, else I shall die with fear.
One drew his sword - cut off my hand, I reached the other out,
“Cut this off too, ye cowards?” I then began to shout.
In rushed some neighbor women with knives both bright and sharp
And stabbed the Kaiser’s butchers into their very hearts.

Take warning all ye British Boys, turn out in thousands strong;
Go fight for King and Country and France will aid you on!
If you should meet the Kaiser, cut off his only arm,
For his “wee one,” it won’t matter, it can’t do any harm.

I’ve just heard Daddy, too, is killed, so all alone I’m left,
Of brothers, sisters, parents dear, I have been made bereft.
Some day I’ll die and meet them all, 'twill be a joyous sight,
For us to live in glory, and view the Kaiser’s plight -
Tortured with remorseful flames, he won’t have power to quell
If nobody conquer him on earth the devil will in ______.
*

Written of course as a ham handed propaganda piece for the first World War. I have many shorter examples, but I figured I would start with my favorite.

8

I’m sorry, but I cannot stand the angst-filled goth poetry that spews out during readings in high school. Stuff like:

My life is a void of blackness
Oh woe is me
My parents don’t understand; how could they?

Etc.

When I was in high school we threw Coffee Talks, where one could read their stories or poetry or have someone read it for them. My poems, which were rather silly, were loved even though they weren’t that good. I attribute it to the fact that they weren’t filled with the angst that everybody was sick of.

It’s OK to write that stuff, but don’t share it with others and pass it off as genius.

9

The worst poetry I’ve ever read, by far, was the crap I wrote in high school and college. Since I was on the yearbook staff in college, there’s an entire section of my poetry and photography in the book. The photography is actually pretty good, but the poetry can only be described as “phony melodrama” or “phony hip.” And no, I will **not **quote any of it here.

10

My poetry (warning: some adult language, do not take orally, does not enable user to fly) is pretty bad by conventional standards. Then again, I’m not a big fan of “serious” poetry anyway. To hell with meaning and content! Dada über alles!

11

Wow. Nine responses and not one mention of Vogon poetry yet. I’m shocked.

12

James Whitcomb Riley= worst poet ever.

He’s from my hometown, and he’s the worst I’ve ever read.

13

A lot of the incompreshensible stuff isn’t as bad as the treacly stuff. But, IMHO, nowhere else in the artistic world is the saying more true that the line between the sublime and the ridiculous is very fine.

A lot of bad poems I simply cannot tell if they are horrible, or sheer genius. But the incomprehensible, imageric poems, are neither.

14

Does spoken word count as poetry? Because, if so, I would like to nominate all spoken word, ever.

15

To be fair, this guy kicks ass. Really.

Just trust me.

16

Good call on the James Whitcomb Riley Indygrrl. He wrote in ‘dialect’ which is a deadly device for any poet with any dialect. I will see if I can dredge up a verse or two tonight to give an example. He was the most popular poet of his time and one of the most beloved literary figures of the late nineteenth century.

Mark Twain, to his credit, despised him.

17

e. e. freaking cummings

how
the hell…
can anyone take
his moronic crap
seriously…

18

Rap as “poetry” is even worse than other pop music as poetry. Paul Simon writes nice lyrics; he sucks as a “poet.”

Shel Silversteen blows. I would also point out that “The Giving Tree” is one of the most misogynistic books ever.

Sylvia Plath is seriously over-rated.

I agree with Dr. Rieux, for the most part; most of cummings is just juvenile.

The brief flirtation with “concrete” or “visual” poetry is gone now, thanks be to the Bard above!

19

Emily Dickinson. Holy crap. It’s like listening to that really banal person in class who thinks that they’re so deep and clever and three steps ahead of everyone, when really they’re two behind… and with erratic capitalization and punctuation to top it all off.

On the other hand, the random stops in her works make me think of William Shatner reading them.

20

I thought I was a poet in high school. I wrote this poem in this one girl’s yearbook, thinking I was the bomb…I was so wrong.

The worst poem I ever heard was one my friend wrote.

**Hey girl, you are so fine
Why can’t I get thou out of my mind?
Why do you have to be so elusive?
I must trust God.
You bomb, girl **

backs away quietly