# Worst line of poetry in the English language **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 17, 2000, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665 "2000-08-17T03:10:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![sliv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@sliv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sliv)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2000, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/41 "2000-08-20T06:22:48Z")
I haven’t seen this yet, and I’ve no idea who wrote it, but apparently it was written after the death of Queen Victoria: Dust to dust, ashes to ashes Into the tomb, the great queen dashes. ---
**Author:** ![DRY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@DRY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DRY)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2000, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/42 "2000-08-20T06:35:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by capacitor \* > \*\*The worst poem for me was “My Eggs”, from _Married With Children_. > > \*\* With all due respect to everyone else, as far as I’M concerned, we have a winner here. Good God, Capacitor, I’d forgotten all about that. And while you win, damn you for reminding me of that damned poem! ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2000, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/43 "2000-08-20T07:41:19Z")
Well I don’t know the poem, but I don’t think the worst poem can be a parody (sorry, that goes for Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings too). The worst poem must be sincerly bad. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by PunditLisa \* > \*\*From William Blake: > > Tyger! Tyger! burning bright > In the forests of the night > What immortal hand or eye > Could frame thy fearful symmetry? > The rest of the poems rhymes, which forces me to pronounce the last word as “sim-me-TRIE” (not sim-me-TREE) to rhyme with eye. \*\* Blake?! No! Ok the symmetry/eye thing as always annoyed the hell out of me too, but only BECAUSE it was such a good poem. “And did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?” Hey, good question. Blake doesn’t belong in a discussion of worst poems anymore than Williams does. I was thinking…who was that guy, very popular in the 60’s, name starts with an “M”. I remember he was pretty horrible. I also have totally repressed his memory. But if anybody knows what I talking about, I think he could be a contender. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2000, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/44 "2000-08-20T16:22:37Z")
Rod McKuen. I’ve seen his slender volumes in used bookshops, but never delved in. His reputation is too mighty for little ol’ me. re: Blake. It’s my understanding the the word eye, at the close of the eighteenth century in Great Britain, was always pronounced as “eee.” As in “Doctor Sardonicus, the Eee, Ear, Nose and Throat Man.” So it rhymes, okay? Lay off Blake, or I’ll get mad. You don’t want me getting my gang of English majors together, do you? We got bicycles chains and thesauruses. ---
**Author:** ![EnochF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/779978/32.png) [@EnochF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EnochF)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2000, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/45 "2000-08-20T23:48:06Z")
I always thought “This is just to say” was about a serial killer who keeps the severed head of a woman in his refrigerator and then one day eats the eyeballs and leaves this note inside one of the eye sockets. _Well?_ Prove me wrong! That poem could be about anything. It’s garbage. Here’s a brief William Carlos Williams impression: this is not a poem (By the way, show that to a bunch of English freshmen, and you’ll get some dork defending _that_ as great literature, too.) Of all the poetry I got saddled with in my high school and college years, Williams bugs me the most. I’m also not found of e. e. cummings, but at least he has something to say, and I’m not a big Gertrude Stein fan, but at least she comes up with some innovative use of language. Williams is a complete waste. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2000, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/46 "2000-08-21T01:28:43Z")
Uke, cut out the threats or I’ll sign you up for the Thomas Kinkaide mailing list. Or, if it’s violence you’re after, I’ll poke out your eee. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SF\_CA\_US](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/41988e/32.png) [@SF\_CA\_US](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SF_CA_US)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2000, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/47 "2000-08-21T06:41:19Z")
**Able was I ere I saw Elba** ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2000, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/48 "2000-08-21T09:17:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ukulele Ike \* > **Rod McKuen. I’ve seen his slender volumes in used bookshops, but never delved in. His reputation is too mighty for little ol’ me.** Thank you! I was driving me crazy. So I looked him up- but apparently even his fans no better than to put his actual verse out in public. I could find only one poem actually quoted, and I still had a hard time picking a line: “How many Frank Sinatra’s do I know? Another one every day. The one whose gentleness to women touches on the renaissance. I honestly belive he’s never met a woman yet he thought to be a tramp.” And this guy was REALLY sucessful. I couldn’t find the text, but the title of his big hit poem: Listen to the Warm has to qualify as a worst line all by itself. > [@](#): > > \*\*re: Blake. It’s my understanding the the word eye, at the close of the eighteenth century in Great Britain, was always pronounced as “eee.” As in “Doctor Sardonicus, the Eee, Ear, Nose and Throat Man.” So it rhymes, okay? > \*\* I figured it was something like that. Still- it makes it akward when you try to drop it into casual conversation. And don’t think I don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2000, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/49 "2000-08-21T14:31:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by EnochF \* > \*\*Here’s a brief William Carlos Williams impression: > > this is not > a poem > > \*\* Actually, that’s a pretty fair [b[Richard Brautigan\*\* impression. Prove your interpretation of Williams’ “This is Just to Say” wrong? Well, one of the basic tenets of Derrida and the Yale Hermaneuticists, who founded the Deconstructionist school of literary criticism, is **close reading of text.** When we examine the text carefully, it is difficult to miss the appearance of the words **"plums."** ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2000, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/50 "2000-08-21T16:01:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ukulele Ike \* > **Williams is one of my favorite poets, and I was gnashing my teeth at the two earlier posts mocking his shorter works. But I couldn’t bring myself up to the strenuous effort of taking hold of people’s collars and trying to make them recognize his brilliance.** We’ve established that we’re of like minds on many subjects, so I hope you won’t take it amiss when I ask if the weekend has restored your strength enough to have a go at making me recognize Williams’ brilliance. I don’t hate the shorter works, and there are many I find at least readable (“Pictures from Brueghel”, for example). I often, however, find myself unable to discern in Williams’ poems any rhythmic principle whatever (and yes, I’ve read his own pronouncements on the subject, noting his own claimed disdain for _vers libre_, etc.). It’s not as if I haven’t made lots of attempts to enjoy Williams; I’ve read extensively in the shorter poems (primiarily those compiled by Charles Tomlinson in the _Selected Poems_), I’ve read _Paterson_ and enjoyed parts of it, I’ve read _In the American Grain_, etc. I also find Williams’ attitude towards his human subjects too frequently patronizing or superior; he writes often of “peasants”, “proletarians”, etc., and almost always in a way that registers a sense of superiority and thinly veiled (if veiled at all) contempt, particularly when the subject is female; “doxies”, “slatterns”, and similar terms of disapprobation occur throughout his work. My main beef with Williams isn’t really his fault. Along with Whitman (whom I do enjoy and admire), Williams’ influence on later poets has been, in my opinion, almost wholly to the bad, as two or three generations of American would-be poets with no sense of rhythm and without Williams’ physician’s eye for the telling detail have squittered out hundreds, if not thousands, of volumes of flat, toneless banalities broken into lines of one or two words, claiming WCW as their model. Feel free to start a new thread, either here or in Great Debates (if you feel this discussion constitutes one) to puruse the topic. Of course, I also won’t be upset if you politely decline or summarily dismiss me as a hopeless Philistine; I long ago gave over taking any aesthetic debate personally. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665/51 "2000-08-22T08:49:07Z")
From Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes: ## quote: ``Then, owls and bats, Cowls and twats, Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods, Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.’’ * * * Apparently, poor Robert mistook “twat” for a nun’s head covering. In fact, it had the same meaning then as it does now. Could it be that Browning had been in Yorkshire near to when he wrote that ? It is still common, especially in South Yorkshire, to hear people use the words thee, thou and thy. Thes are often shortened to just one letter as in the song On Ilkley Moor bar t’hat Here bar t’hat means without ones headgear - bar the hat. You may hear a Yorkshireman say something like “Get t’at on lad.” Meaning - Get thy hat on. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-line-of-poetry-in-the-english-language/29665.md?page=2)