Very Bad Poetry (9 page)
Authors: Kathryn Petras
First of walkers come the Earwigs,
Earwigs or FORFICULINA;
At the tail we find a weapon,
Very like a pair of pincers,
And with this ’tis said the Earwigs
Open and fold up the hind wings;
You may watch them and observe it;
I have never had the pleasure.
(fl. 1907)
P
arrington won accolades on the basis of only one poem: “An Elegy to a Dissected Puppy,” an antivivisection piece that captures the reader from the very first line. The
New York Evening Post
praised the poet as “the latest addition to the galaxy of the Tar Heel State” and recognized her poetry as “a thing of merit … not to be lost.”
Unfortunately, the complete poem
has
been lost. Only the following stanzas remain. However the
Evening Post
does give readers a tantalizing hint of the close of the poem. The dog is dead, but Parrington imagines it living again “mayhap in far-off hunting grounds, on aerial feet.”
An Elegy to a Dissected Puppy
Sweet Dog! now cold and stiff in death,
What cruel hand enticed thee here?
Did toothsome crust of juicy bone
Allure to stretch on thy bier?
… ruthless hands of alien race
Are opening up thy quiet breast,
With prying eyes they peer within,
Explore the contents of thy chest.
(fl. 1800s)
On Time, Death, and Eternity
But ah! when first to breathe man does begin
He then inhales the noxious seeds of sin,
Which every goodly feeling does destroy
And more or less his after life annoy.
The Worst Tribute to a Great Poet
M
any bad poets have paid tribute to the greats of their profession, usually in appropriately atrocious verse. Shelley is the victim in the lines below.
from
English Poets
by
James McIntyre
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.
(1866-1947) or (1866-1906)
P
eterson’s life was the stuff of a sentimental novel, quite possibly much like the one she wrote. A North Carolina native, she spent her early life at home, too disabled to attend school. Her rather dismal home life inspired her to write a little-read novel,
Little Pansy,
but it was her decision to append eleven poems at the end of the novel that brought her world acclaim. A local editor championed her poems, which he and other critics said rivaled those of Julia A. Moore (q.v.).
As for the life of the poet, one account says she died in 1906; another suggests she grew up and became a lonely schoolteacher who then became a mail-order bride in Texas and died at the ripe old age of eighty-one after eating a rather large watermelon.
I kissed dear Pa at the grave,
Then soon he was buried away;
Wreaths were put on his tomb,
Whose beauty soon decay.…
….
I saw him coming stepping high,
Which was of his walk the way;
I had stopped at a house near by—
His face was as pale as clay.…
….
When he was having convulsions
He feared he would hurt me;
Therefore told me to go away.
He had dug artichokes for me.
Pa dug artichokes on that day,
He never will dig any more;
He has only paid the debt we owe,
We should try to reach the shining shore.
Here Peterson reminisces nostalgically about the charms of her rural southern home.
The Old Homestead
… I sometimes alligators heard
When I was on the piazza at home;
Ma, also their noise heard,
Which was generally in the gloom;
Brother Jimmie and his brother one killed
And brought it to the house near;
I beheld it in death still,
But the monster was not fair.
….
The red haw grows at the old home,
Which is sweeter than the river haw;
But the river haw has a perfume
Which is nice in the nostril to draw.
(fl. 1850)
N
ot much is known of this poet, who published several books of verse, including
The Village Bridal, and Other Poems
as well as
Phases of Thought.
How oft alas my brother have I warned thee to beware
The horrid spells of guilt which led the drunkards’ life to care;
But no! you heeded not the warning words I spoke with pain,
Your wretched soul that once was pure was bound as in a chain;
At length, one cold October, when the night was late and dark,
The awful doom came on which sank thy life’s unsteady barque;
Thy mangled corpse upon the rails in frightful shape was found,
The ponderous train had killed thee as its heavy wheels went round.
(1849-1916)
J
ames Whitcomb Riley, known as the “Hoosier poet,” was the most popular American writer of his time, and certainly the wealthiest.
Riley began writing after first trying his hand at a range of odd jobs. He was an itinerant sign painter and an actor working with patent medicine shows until he took up with the
Indianapolis Journal
and began writing dialect poems. The public adored them. From then on Riley was a rousing success, turning out favorites such as “When the Frost Is on the Punkin,” “Little Orphant Annie,” and “The Raggedy Man.”
The secret of Riley’s success seems to have been the combination of sentimental, homey subjects with a homespun philosophy—and often a heavy touch of Hoosier dialect, heavy on slang and apostrophes and light on grammar and final
gs.
Only Riley could write lines such as “Good’s ’bout ’leventy-hunnerd times better than gold!” Perhaps only Riley would want to.
Thweet Poethy! let me
lithp
forthwith,
That I may thhing of the name of Smith—
Which name, alath!
In Harmony hath
No adequate rhyme, letht you grant me thith—
That the thimple thibillant thound of eth—
(Which to thave my thoul, I can not expreth!)
Thuth I may thhingingly,
Wooingly and winningly
Thu—thu—thound in the name of Smith.
O give me a name that will rhyme with Smith,—
For wild and weird ath the sthrange name ith,
I would sthrangle a sthrain
And a thad refrain
Faint and sthweet ath a whithpered kissth;
I would thhing thome thong for the mythic mitth
Who beareth the thingular name of Smith—
The dathzling brilli-ant
Rarely rethilliant
Ap-pup-pellation of Smith!
O had I a name that would rhyme with Smith—
Thome rhythmical tincture of rethonant blith—
Thome melody rare
Ath the cherubth blare
On them little trumpeth they’re foolin’ with—
I would thit me down, and I’d thhing like thith
Of the girl of the thingular name of Smith—
The sthrangely curiouth,
Rich and luxuriouth
Pup-patrronymic of Smith.
The Happy Little Cripple
I’m thist a little crippled boy, an’ never goin’ to grow
An’ git a great big man at all!—’cause Aunty told me so.
When I was this a baby onc’t I failed out of the bed
An’ got “The Curv’ture of the Spine”—’ats what the Doctor said.
I never had no Mother nen—fer my Pa runned away
An’ dassn’t come back here no more—’cause he was drunk one day
An’ stobbed a man in thish-ere town, an’ couldn’t pay his fine!
An’ nen my Ma she died—an’ I got “Curv’ture of the Spine”!
I’m nine years old! an’ you can’t guess how much I weigh, I bet!
Last birthday I weighed thirty three! An’ I weigh thirty yet!
I’m awful little for my size—I’m purt’ nigh littler ‘an
Some babies is!—an’ neighbors all calls me “The Little Man!”
An’ Doc one time he laughed and said: “I ’spect, first thing you know,
You’ll have a spike-tail coat an’ travel with a show!”
An’ nen I laughed—till I looked round an’ Aunty was a-cryin’—
Sometimes she acts like that, ’cause I got “Curv’ture of the Spine!”
A Dubious “Old Kriss”
Us-folks is purty pore—but Ma
She’s waitin’—two years more—tel Pa
He serves his term out. Our Pa he—
He’s in the Penitenchurie!
Now don’t you tell!—’cause
Sis,
The baby,
she
don’t know he is—
’Cause she wuz only four, you know,
He kissed her last an’ hat to go!
Pa alluz liked Sis best of all
Us childern.—’Spect it’s ’cause she fall
When she ’us ist a
chiled,
one day—
An’ make her back look thataway.
Pa—’fore he be a burglar—he’s
A locksmiff, an’ maked locks, an’ keys,
An’ knobs you pull for bells to ring,
An’ he could ist make
anything!
’Cause our Ma
say
he can!—
An’
this
Here little pair of crutches Sis
Skips round on—Pa maked
them
—yessir!—
An’ silvur-plate-name here for her!
Pa’s out o’ work when Chris’mus come
One time, an’ stay away from home,
An’ ‘s drunk an’ ’buse our Ma, an’ swear
They ain’t no “Old Kriss” anywhere!
(1860-1939)
I
n the 1890s Amanda McKittrick Ros began amazing audiences with her novels, all of which bore alliterative titles such as
Irene Iddesleigh,
and
Donald Dudley.
These were soon followed by Ros’s equally alliteratively titled books of verse:
Poems of Puncture
and
Fumes of Formation,
which Ros explains was
hatched within a mind fringed with Fumes of Formation, the Ingenious Innings of Inspiration and Thorny Tincture of Thought.
Ros applied those “Ingenious Innings of Inspiration” to transform her own rather prosaic life in Northern Ireland. She dropped the extra
s
from her husband’s last name of Ross, probably to link herself to the ancient family of de Ros; claimed that the McKittricks were descended from King Sitric of Denmark; and elevated her beloved husband to friendship with the eminent Victorian leader Sir Randolph Churchill, who apparently once happened to pass through her husband’s train station.
Ros was famous for her bizarre word usage. She coined such descriptive terms as “sanctified measures of time” (Sunday), “globes of glare” (eyes), “bony supports” (legs), “southern necessary” (pants—
south
refers to the southern or lower portion of the body) and “globules of liquid lava” (sweat).
Although not the “high-bred daughter of distinguished effeminacy” she wished to have been, Ros was something else: a writer with a gift for (as she puts it) “disturbing the bowels.”
A “Reduced Dignity” invited me to muse on its merits
Holy Moses! Have a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brain lie here
Mortal loads of beef and beer,
Some of whom are turned to dust,
Every one bids lost to lust
….
Famous some were—yet they died;
Poets—Statesmen—Rogues beside,
Kings—Queens, all of them do rot,
What about them? Now—they’re not!
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 and 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 neighbour 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_____.
This poem is written of a visit to the cemetery (“tracks of lifeless friends” is Rosian for “cemetery”). It is particularly notable for the confused speculation at the end.