Very Bad Poetry (3 page)
Authors: Kathryn Petras
Theirs was not the peaceful death-bed,
Where affection’s silent tears,
O’er the couch of pain fast falling,
Blend with deep responsive prayers;
….
Nay, their death was strangely fearful!
No fond parent closed their eyes,
And no voice of pity answer’d
To their feebly moaning cries!
(1860-1944)
T
he Reverend Edwin Emanuel Bradford was a prolific writer, churning out about fifteen volumes of verse over the course of twenty-three years. In a zealous, forceful style, he took on topics such as women’s rights, which he was apparently against; morality, which he was for; and sin, again against.
This selection, from “The Tree of Knowledge,” a longer poem that took on sin, religious belief, and the like, is a cutting indictment of the modern woman.
The Tree of Knowledge
Canto XI “Equality”
In a sense a bee may be
Equal to an elephant,
Seeing she can certainly
Do a score of things he can’t:
All the same the fact remains
She has not his force or brains.
That evening when the girls and Ray
Resumed their regulated play,
The lusty lad, more lightly dressed
Rolled up his sleeves and bared his chest.
A sister served: the boy returned.
A ball came bounding back and burned,
As if red-hot, her dainty cheek
She cried and raved. Ray did not speak,
But let the girls, like angry bees,
Swarm round and sting them at their ease
And when they all had said their say,
He simply bowed, and strolled away
‘I can sting; you can’t,’
The bee said, ‘and I’ll do it.’
She stung the elephant.
He never even knew it!
But soon by chance the burly brute
In passing crushed her with his foot.
Within a London hospital there lies,
Tucked in his cot,
A child with golden curls and big blue eyes.
The night is hot,
And though the windows in the long low ward
Are open wide,
No breath of air comes from the sun-baked yard
That lies outside.
….
A kindly nurse who sees his wistful smile,
To cheer him cries;
“The doctor says that in a little while
He’ll let you rise,
And send you home again!” His eyes grow dim.
She little thinks
What since his father died home means to him—
His mother drinks!
The Most Lurid Account of Tragedy
D
eath, preferably by disaster, is a favorite topic of very bad poets. They eagerly and cheerfully share with their audience every lurid detail. Here is the worst of the worst by one of the most enthusiastic purveyors of what we call “tabloid verse,” William McGonagall.
from
Calamity in London; Family of Ten Burned to Death
by
William McGonagall
Oh, Heaven! it was a frightful and pitiful sight to see
Seven bodies charred of the Jarvis family;
And Mrs. Jarvis was found with her child, and both carbonized,
And as the searchers gazed thereon they were surprised.
And these were lying beside the fragments of the bed,
And in a chair the tenth victim was sitting dead;
Oh Horrible! Oh, Horrible! What a sight to behold,
The charred and burnt bodies of both young and old.
(fl. 1918)
T
he colonel was a soldier, a beekeeper, a poet, a publisher, and an entrepreneur from Salem, North Carolina. Although he comes to our attention for his
Brittain’s Poems,
which contains his work and that of other poets, he also wrote and published beekeeping guides.
The colonel identifies himself as “an old, disable Confederate Veteran” [sic], but the fact that he survived until 1918 suggests his disability did not affect his general health or his entrepreneurial spirit, which seems quite strong, as evidenced in the following admonition on the cover of his book:
Never loan this Book to any one. I will keep these Books in stock. Tell them to confine five dimes between two Postal Cards or fifty cents in stamps and this Book will be forthcoming. A Premium with every Book.
The Tragedy of Ida Ball Warren
and Samuel Christie
This is a true story about the consequences of an illicit love affair.
There was a woman lived in Winston-Salem,
She was beautiful and meek,
She helped to murder her husband,
Who was found in Muddy Creek.
…
He [Christie] conducted with great propriety,
They thought that he meant no harm,
He went to a neighboring druggist
And procured chloroform.
They administered it to Warren,
Put a noose around his neck.
They choked him quite to death.
As we all do expect.
And when the breath had left him,
He was nothing but common junk,
They doubled him up as best they could
And put him in a trunk.
….
He [Christie] took the corpse from the trunk,
He beat his face to pulp,
Tied weights to his arms and legs,
And tumbled him into the gulf.
….
A fisherman went up the stream,
He thought he saw a root,
On closer investigation
He saw it was a human foot.
(fl. 1894)
T
he quintessential multiculturalist, 1890s-style, Fred Emerson Brooks wrote popular collections of popular verse on popular subjects ranging from the bald eagle to babies to battles. He also was extremely partial to that audience-pleasing late-nineteenth-century literary device—writing in dialect. It has been said that audiences attending his poetry readings used to leap to their feet, cheering. And it is no wonder, if one can imagine him reading from a piece such as his “Foreigners on Santa Claus.” This multicultural masterpiece gave him a chance to demonstrate his able hand writing in ersatz English, German, Scots, French, Irish, and Italian accents:
The bonnie Scotchman niver doot
Wi’ Scots Wauhai!
That Santa Claus goes a’ aboot.…
segues into
We have ze Santa Claus een France
We see him when we get ze chance.
I lu-love you very well,
Much mu-more than I can tell,
With a lu-lu-lu-lu-love I cannot utter;
I kn-know just what to say
But my tongue gets in the way,
And af-fe-fe-fe-fe-fection’s bound to stutter!
When a wooer wu-wu-woos,
And a cooer cu-cu-coos,
Till his face is re-re-red as a tomato,
Take his heart in bi-bi-bits,
Every portion fi-fi-fits,
Though his love song su-su-seem, somewhat staccato!
I’ll wu-worship you, of course,
And nu-never get divorce,
Though you stu-stu-stu-stu-storm in angry weather;
For whu-when you’re in a pique
So mu-mad you cannot speak,
We’ll be du-du-du-du-dumb then both together.
Old Eagle
From thine eyrie, the crag,
Watch over thy flag,
And ne’er let it trail in the dust!
Soaring high in the air
Ever this aegis bear:
“In Freedom and God is our Trust.”
Fear not, grand eagle,
The bay of the beagle!
(1790-1876)
S
olyman Brown, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, was of that rare breed—poet-dentist. He owned a dental supply store, was a founder of the American Society of Dental Surgeons, and worked with the New York Teeth Manufacturing Company. So it is no wonder his best known literary work is about teeth, the aptly named “Dentologia—A Poem on the Diseases of the Teeth and Their Proper Remedies with Notes, Practical, Historical, Illustrative and Explanatory by Eleazer Parmly, Dentist.”
Portions of this poem were published in the
American Journal of Dental Science
and highly praised by its reviewer, who noted that the author not only had a fine grip on the science of dentistry, but also “a mind … richly imbued with poetic fancy.” The five-canto poem actually helped improve the status of the dental profession. Brown was spurred to write more, turning out next “Dental Hygeia—A Poem,” and then, in a startling change of subject, “Cholera King.”
The Dentologia—A Poem on the Diseases of the Teeth
… her lips disclosed to view,
Those ruined arches, veiled in ebon hue,
Where love had thought to feast the ravished sight
On orient gems reflecting snowy light,
Hope, disappointed, silently retired,
Disgust triumphant came, and love expired!
….
Whene’er along the ivory disks, are seen,
The filthy footsteps of the dark gangrene;
When caries come, with stealthy pace to throw
Corrosive ink spots on those banks of snow-
Brook no delay, ye trembling, suffering fair,
But fly for refuge to the dentist’s care.
(1830-1897)
A
native of the Isle of Man, the Rev. Thomas Edward Brown hoped he could encourage “the great Manx poet” to appear. To this end, he wrote poems not only in English, but also in the Manx dialect. His work had a “peculiar, irresistible flavor,” as William Henley, English critic and writer, put it.
Peculiar
is the key word here. Brown, who stated that he was “a born sobber,” had a tendency to drift a bit into the histrionic and had a singular way of putting things, to say the least. As a
Spectator
review of Brown’s poetry said: “We cannot say whether the author of this volume has much gift for poetry of the conventional form. But what he has done he has done well.”
Sometimes, however, the unconventional nature of the poetry got just a bit out of hand, as evidenced in the following.
Between our folding lips
God slips
An embryon life, and goes;
And this becomes your rose.
We love, God makes: in our sweet mirth
God spies occasion for a birth.
Then is it his, or is it ours?
I know not—He is fond of flowers.
(fl. 1907)
A
n American poet who flourished in the early 1900s, Wallace Bruce published at least six books of verse in handsome gilt-covered editions. Bruce garnered a fair amount of praise from readers and critics alike. The
Times
said his poems were “sprightly and graceful.” John Greenleaf Whittier found them “fine and fitting.” The poet was fond of bucolic, historic, and occasionally lighter themes. To our knowledge he is the only poet to have found inspiration in a brick.
O Jolly brick, with kindly wrinkled face,
With ruddy cheek and hospitable look,
By Knickerbocker you shall have a place
And on my mantel stand, my quaintest book.
Epitome of hearty, happy days,
When even bricks were honest, good and true;
A gentle humor o’er your visage plays—
With heart and hand I welcome you.
(fl. 1880s)
N
ew Yorker H. C. Bunner was the editor of
Puck
magazine and a writer of novels and poetry. Although
Nation
magazine termed his first book of poetry,
Airs from Araby,
“a rather commonplace volume,” the collection contains poems that aren’t all that commonplace. Instead, it seems that Bunner periodically took the name of his magazine a little too much to heart … and was a bit more puckish than perhaps he should have been.
In School House
A Real Romance
The boy with a fair-curled head
Smiles with masculine scorn,
When the sad small note is read,
With its straggling script forlorn:
“Charley, wy is it you won’t
Forgive me laughing at you?
I will kill my self if you don’t
Honest I will for true!”
….
To the teacher’s ears like a dream
The school-room noises float—
Then a sudden bustle—a scream
From a girl—“She has cut her throat!”
And the poor little hunchbacked chap
From his corner leaps like a flash—
Has her death-like head in his lap—
And his fingers upon the gash.
’T is not deep. An “eraser” blade
Was the chosen weapon of death;
And the face on the boy’s knee laid
Is alive with a fluttering breath.
But faint from the shock and fright,
She lies, too weak to be stirred,
Blood-stained, inky and white,
Pathetic, small, absurd.
The cruel Adonis stands
Much scared and woe-begone now;
Smoothing with nervous hands
The damp hair off her brow.
He is penitent, through and through;
And she—she is satisfied.
Knowing my sex as I do,
I wish I could add: She died.