Authors: Kathryn Petras
Very Bad Poetry (10 page)
No place I love to visit more
Than tracks of lifeless friends,
For, when I weary grow, I go
To study odds and ends.…
The great, the mighty, medium, poor
In that one flat do lie
In abject silence, ne’er they spake
No matter how they try.
Some marble symbols which record,
The virtues of the dead
Are like all lawyers in a court,
Who truthful clients dread.…
Wherein like many of the poor
With tiny bits of slate
Stuck round in every shape and form
Apart from rich and great.…
Each slate records the name and age,
Where he or she was laid,
Scored thereon with a gravel stone
Which rock their debts have paid.
Alas! Upon that Mighty Day,
All grades—all sects must rise,
What if the poor the rich shall be
Before poor Riches’ eyes!
This is a polemic against Ros’s most noted critic, Barry Pain, at the announcement of his death.
That Pain has ceased to mock, to mar
Those gems he picked up near and far,
Is evident. His pricky pen
Reclaim it ne’er shall he again
A mighty maggot, he thought he,
A slavey now to Master D.
….
Great Mercy! I shall say no more
But ask and answer as of yore:
Why should all such “rodents of State”
Have scope to nibble—genius great?
The answer is—They’re bare of bread
Their only food—a brilliant head.
Although the title suggests otherwise, this poem is a polemic against modern fashion, and, in the poet’s unspoken last word, against, as she might put it, “s——x.”
By a freak of the lustful that spreads like a disease
Which demanded that females wear pants if you please,
But I stuck to the decentest of attire
And to alter my “gender” I’ll never aspire.
During that hallowed century now dead and gone
In which good Queen Victoria claimed to be born:
From childhood her modesty was seen
Her exalted position demanded when Queen.
She set an example of decency rare,
That no English Queen before her you’d compare:
Neither nude knee nor ankle, nude bosom nor arm
Dare be seen in her presence this Queen to alarm.
She believed in her sex being loving and kind,
And modesty never to march out of line
By exposing those members unrest to achieve,
Which pointed to morals immorally grave.
But said to relate when she bade “Adieu”
To earth and its vanities tainted with “rue”
That centre of fashion, so French in its style.
Did its utmost to vilify decency’s smile.
….
It wasn’t long after till modesty grew
A thing of the past for me and for you;
Last century’s fashions were blown quite aside,
The ill-advised folk of this age now deride.
The petticoat faded away as we do
In circumference it covered not one leg but two,
Its successor exposes the arms, breasts and necks,
Legs, knees and thighs and too often—the ______.
She rises mostly every day,
At sunrise, noon or night,
Her one and only thought is where’s
The drink to make her “tight.”
For it very often happens,
That bipeds so inclined
Would practise tricks more filthy
Than drinking too much wine.
… [her lips] form the sweetest mouth e’er made
Void of that horrid smell
Of cigs, so many female grades
Prefer to Heaven or !
The following lines criticize modern women who have picked up bad masculine habits.
I Love to See a Lady Nice and Natural at Any Price
And smoke and spit, no matter where,
And very often curse and swear,
I lose my temper o’er these arts
That stamp such women—Dirty Clarts.
When Bad Poems Happen to Good Poets
W
illiam Wordsworth, one of England’s greatest poets, poet laureate of England, author of numerous masterpieces, had his off days. Sometimes it was just a line that went astray—as in his unconsciously pornographic:
Give me your tool, to him I said.
Other times it was an entire poem, such as the following work—possibly one of the worst poems ever written by a good poet. Wordsworth explained that he was compelled to write these lines after seeing
on a stormy day, a thorn which I had often past, in
calm and bright weather, without noticing it. I said
to myself, “Cannot I by some invention do as much
to make this Thorn permanently an impressive object
as the storm has made it to my eyes at the moment?
Unfortunately for Wordsworth, many might say that the answer to his question is no.
from
The Thorn
by
William Wordsworth
Before you up the mountain go,
Up to the dreary mountain-top,
I’ll tell you all I know.
’Tis now some two-and-twenty years
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave, with a maiden’s true good will,
Her company to Stephen Hill;
And she was blithe and gay,
And she was happy, happy still
Whene’er she thought of Stephen Hill.
And they had fixed the wedding day,
The morning that must wed them both;
But Stephen to another Maid
Had sworn another oath;
And with the other Maid, to church
Unthinking Stephen went—
Poor Martha! on that woeful day
A cruel, cruel fire, they say,
Into her bones was sent:
It dried her body like a tinder,
And almost turned her brain to cinder.
(1849-1889)
A
merican poet Francis Saltus Saltus considered himself a member of the decadent school of literature. He loved modern women who smoked cigarettes, and he pored through the Bible in search of pornographic sections and idolized the French writers Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval, and the Marquis de Sade.
Like his heroes, Saltus was fascinated by the morbid, the depraved, and the abnormal. Unlike them he wrote with a boyish exuberance—especially heavy on the exclamation points—and this tendency adds a novel twist to his theoretically dark poetic subjects.
By the time Saltus died at age thirty-nine, he had written over five thousand poems, most of them a unique blend of lurid subject matter, florid imagery, unbridled enthusiasm, and surprise endings—a fascinating collection of “decadence lite.”
Here the poet compares British and Indian child-rearing habits, coming to a decidedly anti-multicultural climax.
Radiant with vernal grace and summer flowers,
The English landscape in rich splendor glows;
Half hidden ’mid sweet labyrinths of bowers,
A snow-white cottage nestles like a rose.
Within a woman sits, supremely blessed.
Her clear, blue eyes reflect a boundless joy.
When, with long kisses on a loving breast,
She soothes to sleep her little, dimpled boy!
Delhi’s majestic temples, domed and porched,
Tower up in proud, magnificent array;
The sluggish Ganges, by the fierce sun scorched,
Gleams like a scimitar in the hot mid-day.
A woman kneels among the reeds and sands,
Kissing a wee, bronzed child that coos and smiles.
Enough,—great Brahma speaks!—with trembling hands
She hurls her first-born to the crocodiles!
The one I loathed, my one malignant foe,
He who had marred my life in cruel wise,
Lay mute before me, nevermore to rise,
Pierced to his treacherous heart by one quick blow.
….
And then, oh God! while I stood fearless there,
Alone in that deserted, sullied place,
I heard, I heard, a murmur of despair,
A hot, swift
something
struck me on the face!
Pallid with anger, I did quickly turn,
To cruelly chastise the foe unknown,
I felt the warm wound on my forehead burn,
But, oh! avenging God!
we were alone!
Then horror held me, while I no thing saw,
I sank unto my knees without control,
For I had understood at last, in awe,
That what had struck me was his
outraged soul!
Incorrigible, false coquette,
She spurned my love and with a smile,
Bade me her promises forget;
Toying with glittering rings the while.
(But tell it not.)
….
“If it must be, if cherished bliss,
Is lost to me forever,” I cried,
“Give me one last, sweet, parting kiss,
To soothe my passion’s injured pride.”
(But tell it not.)
With pretty gestures like a bird
In her rare loveliness unique,
She, smiling, rose, without a word,
And gently kissed my lips and cheek.
(But tell it not.)
That peerless beauty, chaste and proud,
Lies in her sumptuous coffin now!
Her sweet limbs hidden in a shroud,
With spotless lilies on her brow.
(But tell it not.)
Friend, there are ways of pain and dread
To veil youth’s dawn in sad eclipse;
She
could not see the
poison spread
On my pate cheeks and livid lips!
(But tell it not.)
This selection shows Saltus at his cynical best—exposing the worst traits of human nature in the person of a circus ringmaster.
The Masters
1.—A Circus Master Speaks to the Clowns
… Come! show your jolly tricks, and be possessed
Like devils with mad laughter!
What are you crying after?
Your child is dead?
Bah! Jump right in the ring.
A whining clown forsooth’s a silly thing.
Turn twenty hand-springs right away,
Or else, by God! I’ll stop your pay.
Two Loves Found Refuge
A Mood of Madness
Two loves found refuge in my happy heart,
One for my bride, one for the healing art;
Each of my spirit claimed an equal part.
….
But, as my talent rose and waxed mature,
Love for my bride became more insecure,
Love for anatomy more deep and pure.
….
She was a
subject
to my eyes alone;
Not woman, forsooth, but so much flesh and bone,
Sinew, and blood, and skin, which were my own.
And I had lawful right, with foul intent,
I who for progress on this sphere was sent,
To use her body for experiment.
So in her wine I dropped consuming blight,
One moaning, shadow-haunted winter night,
And, watching, clutched my scalpel’s handle tight.
Then, ere her eyes, that agony expressed,
Had closed forever, with impatient zest,
My hands were red dissecting her white breast.
(1847-?)
A
popular playwright, poet, and essayist, George R. Sims was especially noted for his letters to the
Times
on the condition of the poor in London, which sparked a Royal Commission to study the problem, so beginning the never-ending series of government commissions studying urban poverty.
Beauty and the Beast
He gazed on the face of the high-born maid,
And saw the mark where the tears had been;
He knew that a daughter had wept and prayed,
He knew that a mother had feared a scene—
Had torn herself from the weeping girl,
Whose love was away o’er the distant sea,
And had sold her child to a titled churl
Who had just got round from a bad d.t.
(fl. 1857)
L
ittle is known of the poet who wrote “I Saw Her in Cabbage Time” but his alliterative pen name—Slocum Slugs, Esq. Published in the Greensboro (North Carolina)
Patriot and Flag,
March 27, 1857, this poem is probably one of the few American poems about the time-honored task of cutting sauerkraut … and certainly one of the most compelling.
A Dutch Melody
I saw her first in Cabbage time,
She was a-cutting kraut—
She’d stop the cutter, now and then,
To turn the head about;
And as she’d salt it in a tub
And stamp it down awhile,
Upon her fresh and rosy lip
Reposed a witching smile.
I saw her next in Winter time,
And still she gaily smiled;
For there upon the cooking-stove
Her grub was being boiled;
Around the huge and greasy pot,
The steam came pouring out;
And from the smell I knew that she
Was cooking “speck” and kraut.
When next I saw her, in the Spring,
She smiled not as before;
A heavy weight was on her heart—
The kraut was “all no more!”
The pot she used to cook it in
Was eaten up with rust;
The cutter hung upon the wall
’Mid spider webs and dust.
