Worst line of poetry in the English language

In My Humble Opinion
21

Reality Chuck-

I agree with you about Williams poems, and how ingenious he is to convey so much in so few words.

But-

I see is poems like one of those double-vision things that you get in Cracker Jack boxes- you know, you turn it one way and it looks like something and hold it at a different angle and the picture changes.

Look at “This is Just to Say”

When D Marie posted it, I laughed my ass off. The poem is just easy to make fun of if you tilt it that way. Do you think the speaker of the poem had this taped to the refrigerator exactly as it appears in print?
That would be funny.

I think that that angle of it adds to the poem’s charm, though.

22

No! Please, make it stop!

23

No, no, no…

The worst poem in history occurred when I translated Ode on the Mammoth Cheese into Esperanto.

*Odo pri la mamuta fromagho
Pezo pli ol sep mil funtoj.
James McINTYRE

Ni vin vidis, reghin’ de fromagho,
Pac’ sur via flava vizagho,
Sub vesperventeta masagho,
Sen iu mushacha damagho.

Kun gajega dekoraci’
Al la Provincekspozici’
Kun multaj dandoj, iros vi
Al Toronto de tie chi.

Tiom da bovinoj kiom abelar’
Au folioj en la arbar’
Bezonis por via triumfa far’,
Fromaghreghin’, kaj via ekstar’.

Ne al vi okazu cikatric’
Char ni audis ke Sinjor’ Harris
Intencas mareksporti vin ghis
La Mondekspozicio en Pariz’.

Je junuloj estu malfidanta,
Char iu el ili povos esti ghenanta,
Kaj mordi vin; kaj oni veanta
Fromaghreghin’, ne estos kanta.

Se vi shvebus de balono,
Vi ombrus ech je tagduono.
Personoj kredus ke estas luno
Kiu krushos ilin kaj kashas sunon.*

(Kopirajto Mateo McLAUCHLIN, 1999.)

If you don’t read Esperanto, you will just have to take my word for it that I’ve added to the original banality and complete lack of felicity and virtuosity, a certain spasticity of grammar and implausible (although possible) turns of phrase (oni ne estos kanta). Intentionally, of course.

My original translator’s foreword read:

This poem, which describes an actual cheese which was made around 1855, is the most famous work of James McIntyre (1827-1906), who is recognized as the most appallingly awful poet in the entire history of Canadian literature. I offer this humble translation with the profound hope that it will do justice to the original masterpiece.

24

Durn furriners.

25

RealityChuck:

Once again I find myself thanking you for your post.

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. Thanks for coming to the rescue.

“These are men! Men!”

26

matt_mcl:

We are not worthy. That’s even better than the British MP who used to translate Beatles songs into sing-able Latin.

You are going to have to phone that into “As it Happens”, you know. And if you don’t, I’m giving the producer your phone number, to ambush you.

27

I see that andygirl also owns a copy of Very Bad Poetry. I’d post more from it, but I’m at work and my copy is somewhere at home. I always loved the poetry about dead children. Maudlin tripe always amuses me.

28

This poetry’s lame,
But who is to blame?
I surely don’t know,
But this thread’s gotta go.
Where Slythe holds dominion,
In My Humble Opinion.

29

Labradorian, you’re joking, right? I mean, that’s not a real poem by an actual Poet Laureate? Egad.

This is the same guy whose “Battle of Blenheim” starts out with a little boy playing with a skull that he found on the riverbank.

I also enjoy the way his rhyme schemes go hammering along, bell-knell, fear-hear, float-boat, away-day, shore-store. Kinda makes you wonder about the criteria for being named a Laureate, don’t it? At the very least, possesion of a rhyming dictionary must be important.

30

Ohhhh! How could I ever forget Thomas Hood’s “The Bridge of Sighs”?

One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
…
Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing:
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing. –

Touch her not scornfully,
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her,
All that remains of her
Now is pure womanly.
…
Still, for all slips of hers,
One of Eve’s family –
Wipe those poor lips of hers
Oozing so clammily.
…
Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
Oh! it was pitiful!
Near a whole city full,
Home she had none.

Sisterly, brotherly,
Fatherly, motherly,
Feelings had changed:
Love, by harsh evidence,
Thrown from its eminence;
Even God’s providence
Seeming estranged.
…
Ere her limbs frigidly
Stiffen too rigidly,
Decently, – kindly, –
Smooth, and compose them;
And her eyes, close them,
Staring so blindly!

Dreadfully staring
Thro’ muddy impurity,
As when the daring
Last look of despairing
Fix’d on futurity.

Perishing gloomily,
Spurr’d by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest. –
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast.

Owning her weakness,
Her evil behaviour,
And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!

31

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.

32

I’m afraid that it is Southey. Pretty impressive, what?
Back to James McIntyre… I own a comilation of his best (?) work, titled "OH! Queen of Cheese; Selections from James McIntyre, the Cheese Poet. I really feel it is selfish not to share. (Incidentally, this book also contains cheese recipes. One of the finest achievements of Canadian publishing, ever.)

Father Ranney, the Cheese Pioneer (extract)
Now we close this glorious theme / This song of curds and rich cream / You can buy your hoops and screws / And all supplies for dairy use / Milk cans and vats, all things like these / In Ingersoll great mart for cheese / Here buyers all do congregate / And pay for cheese the highest rate.

Shelley
We have scarcely time to tell thee / Of the strange and gifted Shelley / Kind hearted man but ill-fated / So youthful, drowned and cremated.
(In addition to being a cheese poet, McI. was an undertaker.)

Dairy Ode (extract)
The quality is often vile / Of cheese that is made in April / Therefore we think for that reason / You should make it later in the season.

As a furniter and coffin maker and dealer, he also wrote his own advertising copy:
McIntyre has a few rows / Of the latest styles of bureaus
Will you please to let me go, ma / To McIntyre’s, to buy a sofa

I have many, many, many more. I haven’t even touched “An Average Rule to Judge of Cheese”, “North-West Rebellion, 1885”, “Lines Read at a Dairymaid’s Social”, “Low Price of Cheese”, “Fertile Lands and Mammoth Cheese”, “The Flood on the Creek, 1891”, “Lightning Rod Agent”, “Nova Scotia” (Please, somebody request “Nova Scotia”), “Peculiarities of Oxford County, its Numerous Windmills”, “Cheese Curd for Bait”, “The Patriotic Canadian Hen”… DID I MENTION THAT I’M NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP?

33

“The Stuffed Owl” by D.B. Wyndham Lewis & Charles Lee has been a source of much joy to me over many years. Lots of Wordsworth, of course…
The silent heavens have goings-on. [The Gipsies]

Eliza Cook…
And now, kind friend, what I have wrote,
I hope you will pass o’er,
And not criticise as some have done
Hitherto herebefore.

Browning, Mr…
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast? [Rabbi Ben Ezra]

Browning, Mrs…
Will you oftly
Murmur softly?

Edward Edwin Foot, possible eponym of the footnote…
Altho’ we (1) mourn for one now gone,
And he–that grey-hair’d Palmerston, (2)
We will give God the praise,–
For he, beyond the age of man, (3)
Eleven years had over-ran
Within two equal days.

(1) The nation.
(2) The Right Honorable Henry John Temple, viscount Palmerston, K.G., G.C.B., etc. (the then Premier of the British government), died at "Brockett Hall, " Herts., at a quarter to eleven o’clock in the forenoon of Wednesday, 18th October, 1865, aged eighty-oine years (all but two days), having been born on the 20th October, 1784. The above lines were written on the occasion of his death.
(3) Scriptural limitation.
Charles Wesley
Ah, lovely appearance of death!
What sight upon earth is so fair?
Not all the gay pageants that breathe
Can with a dead body compare.
[On the Sight of a Corpse]

Julia Moore…
God has took their little treasure,
And his name I’ll tell you now,
He has gone from earth forever,
Their little Charles Henry House [Little Henry]

(Yes, Mark Twain greatly enjoyed her efforts!)
…and a flock of others right up there with the Vogon Captain. Difficult to refrain from quoting the entire book, but I’ll leave you with one of my favorite of their tidbits, from Henry Vaughan:

How brave a prospect is a bright backside!
34

NOTE TO ALL WHO POST HERE:

To avoid any copyright infringments, and to stick with the original OP, please stick to one, or at best 2, lines of the worst poetry.

Example:
There once was a man from Peru
Whose limerick lines ended in two…

Thank you.

35

slythe, I hear what you’re saying. But a lot of this poetry is ancient and IIRC therefore not subject to copyright laws any longer…

What IS the law on that? 60 years?
WHERE IS A LAWYER WHEN YOU NEED ONE?

36

From Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes:

Apparently, poor Robert mistook “twat” for a nun’s head covering. In fact, it had the same meaning then as it does now.

37

Just want to say that I was cruising along, amused by all of this very bad poetry, until I got to The Red Wheelbarrow, which I had not read before. I think it is a beautiful, subtle, meaningful poem, as is This Is Just To Say, which I know and like.

Thanks to everyone who came to the defense of William Carlos Williams. I think I’m going to go out and get a book of his poems.

38

Moderator:

You can’t infringe on the public domain, which is the copyright status of the overwhelming majority of poetry that has been posted so far.

39

I am merely trying to steer this back to the original OP.
For further reference, check the title of this thread, o.k.?

40

The worst poem for me was “My Eggs”, from Married With Children.