Jim Morrison of the doors, but I’m reluctant to even call that poetry.
Also, all poetry by women. Oh, unless “Already in Use” is a woman, because I liked that “Baal” poem.
I like Ogden Nash, but I’m a rube.
Ha! I’d never heard of Barnabe Barnes – that’s too funny. The reference to “golden showers” doesn’t help. :eek: 
I took a course this semester on early Tudor literature and encountered the Eclogues of Alexander Barclay, proclaimed a Bad Poet by none other than C.S. Lewis. Fortunately, he’s entertaining-bad rather than unreadable-bad. A few samples from Eclogue 2, which is basically one shepherd telling another why life at court isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Make hunger thy sause be thou never so nice,
For there shalt thou find none other kind of spice.
Thy potage is made with wedes and with ashes,
And betwene thy teeth oft time the coles crashes,
Sometime halfe sodden is both thy fleshe & broth,
The water and hearbes together be so wroth
That eche goeth aparte, they can not well agree,
And ofte be they salte as water of the sea.
Seldome at chese hast thou a little licke,
And if thou ought haue within it shall be quicke,
All full of magots and like to the raynebowe,
Of diuers colours as red, grene, and yelowe,
On eche side gnawen with mise or with rattes,
Or with vile wormes, with dogges or with cattes,
Uncleane and scoruy, and harde as the stone,
It looketh so well thou wouldest it were gone.
Of course, skanky cheese isn’t the only hazard of dining at court:
If the dishe be pleasaunt, eyther fleshe or fishe,
Ten hands at once swarme in the dishe.
And if it be flesh, ten kniues shalt thou see
Mangling the flesh and in the platter flee:
To put there thy handes is perill without fayle,
Without a gauntlet or els a gloue of mayle.
Among all these kniues thou one of both must haue,
Or els it is harde thy fingers whole to saue:
Ofte in such dishes in court is it seene.
Some leaue their fingers, eche knife is so kene.
On a finger gnaweth some hasty glutton,
Supposing it is a piece of biefe or mutton.
Tasty, huh?
Ahem
Do any of the longer-term dopers remember Prose? A teenage Canadian girl with a pathological loathing for all things American. One day somebody went to her website, looked up the poetry page and (when they stopped laughing) posted a link to it. Within a day, she’d removed the URL from her profile. Within a week she was gone from here completely. Might be the first case of somebody being shamed off the SDMB …
All haiku is a real bore.
And people who say “I’s wonderful you just need to read more of it” are worse bores.
I wrote a program once that was supposed to write poetry.
It was pretty smart, for a program of its type. It knew about rhyme schemes, and it had a fair idea of where the accents fall in English words. It didn’t know what any of the words meant, but it had a bunch of long text samples to use for reference, so it would at least know what patterns English words tend to come in, even if it didn’t know why.
It turns out that knowing what all the words mean is really important.
I don’t have it anymore. If I did, I’d make it cook up a sestina for you, so maybe it’s for the best.
Somebody Blew Up America by Amiri Baraka, the former Poet Laureate of the State of New Jersey, is my favorite awful poem. An excerpt:
Judge Roy Moore writes good bad poetry.
That all men were “created” was a truth "self-evident,
To secure the rights God gave us was the role of government.
And if any form of government became destructive of this end,
It was their right, their duty, a new one to begin.
www.datasync.com/~danielj/politicspg2.htm
He reminds me of Ring Lardner’s Maysville Minstrel. If you are a fan of bad poetry you probably would enjoy that story.
I wish I could remember my friend Nick’s Taco Bell poem. Alas, I only recall those last thrilling lines: “Taco, Taco, Taco Bell. Yeah.” Someone else had a poem about a box that was pretty amusing.
I miss creative writing class.
I’ve read a little Edgar Guest. I can’t link to any of his poems, but they tend to be oversentimental, and the fact that a large hunk of them were written on a deadline (for a Detroit newspaper) didn’t help either.
And as racinchikki alluded to, it also fits the theme from Gilligan’s Island. Which of course is another easy way to ruin her poetry (and Amazing Grace too, cause it fits the same).
The only problem with the Yellow Rose/Gilligan/Amazing Grace thing is that there is a lot of good poetry that fits because it’s all about rhythm. You can sing a Shakespearean sonnet to the Star Spangled Banner, does that make one good or one bad?
Ahem back at you. If you want people to know what you’re linking to, try being descriptive instead of coy. You didn’t mention Jewel’s book, you dropped a blind link. My comment stands.
Wow, sensitive much? Note the smiley in my post, and lighten up.
In high school, I came up with a pretty comprehensive list of all the tunes Emily Dickinson poems could be sung to. I’ve forgotten many of them, unfortunately, but I do remember that good ol’ Emmy’'s poems work well with the tunes from The Liberty Bell March, Found a Peanut, and Oh, Susanna.
Oh, and back to the OP–Suzanne Somers came out with a book of poetry a while ago. That’s some of the worst drivel ever. It’s so bad that it’s good for a laugh. It would also produce a sigh of relief in any aspiring writer, because everyone just knows that there’s no way their writing could manage to be nearly as bad as hers.
The immortal McGonagall towers over the field of bad poetry like a Colossus, if for no other triumph than the following:
Or the exquisite delicacy of his paean to Greenland,
Contrast the usual poetic blather about Immortal Truth with the becoming modesty of the following:
The bard does not presume to decide for mermaids, who must be considered to have their own opinions.
I remember an entire essay on kitsch, which triggered my life-long appreciation for such evidences that poetry should not be confined to those with talent.
Delightful stuff, for those who appreciate that there must be those who make the top half possible.
Someday I will start a Florence Foster Jenkins appreciation thread. Or else commit suicide - I haven’t decided.
Regards,
Shodan