Drop dead. Plop. Flop.

I don't know how I get myself into these moods. Dragging bottom emotionally for no reason that makes any sense, except that it's December, I thought I'd look up some Christmas poetry. I found one by John Betjeman that was quite nice, if long - but it fell apart by going all religious at the end, with babies in stables, etc., and ending with "God was man in Palestine/And lives today in bread and wine". Way to wreck it, John.

William Topaz McGonagall's atrocities occurred to me, and I wondered if he had done any Christmas poems (for the only thing better than a good Christmas poem is a bad Christmas poem - but it must be monumentally bad, not just dirty or jingly or a stupid takeoff of Clement Moore). But I've already "done" McGonagall in past posts, and I'm a bit sick of him, to be honest.

I found a horrible Robert Frost poem in which a man pounds on his door of a snowy evening and asks if he can cut down all the lovely snow-sparkling pines on his property to sell as Christmas trees. And here Frost hums and haws over it, turns it over in his mind, thinking: well, here are the advantages in it; and hmmm, here are the disadvantages in it; and: AIIIIIEEEEEK! Cut down all your friggin' trees?? What are you thinking? I guess back then it must have seemed that there were trees enough, that they were endless, and just a crop to be managed like any other. But I was so upset at this point that I didn't even read to the end.

Discouraged, I threw away Christmas and widened my scope to include any old poetry that was sublimely bad, but it's hard to find truly awful stuff. I found articles quoting three or four weak lines in, say, Tennyson. Auden once used a bad adjective, and somebody found a pun in Shakespeare, comparing an orange to Seville (or was it servile?). Well, who gives a shit about that? I wanted bad, and I wasn't getting it.

Until.

Until I found. . . This. 

A Tragedy

Theophilus Marzials

Death!
Plop.

The barges down in the river flop.

Flop, plop.

Above, beneath.

From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.

Plop, plop.

And scudding by

The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,

And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"

And my heart shrieks -- "Die."

*          *          *          *          *
My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
                              And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
                                                Plop.
                                                Dead.

And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
                           Flop, plop.
*          *          *          *          *
A curse on him.
                            Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --

My Devil -- My "Friend"

I had trusted the whole of my living to!

Ugh; and I knew!

Ugh!

So what do I care,

And my head is empty as air --

I can do,

I can dare,

(Plop, plop

The barges flop

Drip drop.)

I can dare! I can dare!

And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.

Drop.

Dead.

Plop, flop.

                                              Plop.

---

                                        [-- from The Gallery of Pigeons (1874) ]

As if this bounty weren't enough, I found these little notes attached to an article about him, claiming that Marzials, not McGonagall, was the worst poet in the English language:

"Theo Marzials, the last of the Victorian aesthetes, who lived on in rural retirement, addicted to beetroot and chlorodyne (morphia, chloroform and prussic acid), for two decades after the world thought him dead. In the 1870s, as a young man with long hair, flowing moustaches and a silk bow tie over his lapels, he worked at the British Museum. According to Max Beerbohm, the great Panizzi himself, founder of the round Reading Room, was one day surprised to hear a shrill voice crying from the gallery: "Am I or am I not the darling of the Reading Room?". . .  Marzials almost outlived danger. "On the last occasion when I happened to catch sight of him, looking into a case of stuffed birds at South Kensington Museum, he had eaten five large chocolate creams in the space of two minutes," wrote Ford in 1911. "He had a career tragic in the extreme and, as I believe, is now dead." But he wasn't. He was living in a farmhouse room in Colyton, Devon. The bed, occupied day and night, had a saucer of sliced beetroot beside it, the smell of which mingled with the fumes of chlorodyne, the smoke of an oil lamp and the steam of a stockpot perpetually simmering on the
stove."

This is disjointed as hell because I've edited 300 or so words out of it, so who knows who "Ford" is, but then again, who cares? The important thing is that I have found a truly horrendous, a harrowingly bad poet, and this opens the door to all sorts of posts about him. Or not. Depends if I can find anything else. Oh, here's one -

The Ghost of Love

by: Theophilus Marzials (1850-1920)

The wan witch at the creepy midnight hour,
When the wild moon was flying to its full,
Went huddling round a damned convent's tower,
From out the crumbling slabs or tombs to pull
Some lecherous leaf or shrieking mandrake-flower.
Beneath she heard the dead men's voices dull;
Around she felt the cold souls creep and cower;
In hand she held a grinning damned's skull!

Then through the ruin'd cloisters, strangely white,
T'wards the struck moon, all swathed in colod grave-bands,
She saw dead Love wringing his hollow hands,
And gliding grimmer than a dank tomb-light.

And with a shriek she rush'd across his path--
And now the hell-worm all her body hath!

The problem with this one is, as Zero Mostel says to Gene Wilder in The Producers: "Nah, it's too good." In fact it's neither good nor bad, and is as purple as most Victorian stuff was. But it strikes me as bargain basement Gerard Manley Hopkins, and even a pale photocopy of Hopkins has a certain power behind it.

I don't know what "colod grave-bands" are, but maybe they played gigs at the cemetary. Were they people of "colo"? We'll never know. (Could be a typo, also.) So even at being the worst, Marzials wasn't the best. Or the other way around.

MARZIALS DISH. This was all I could find about his sex life, and it came from Wikipedia so it MUST be true:

"The relationship between Marzials and fellow author Edmund Gosse is debated, with some claims that their relationship was more than platonic."

But wait, there's more. . . a truly cheesy poem!

We have seen the Queen of cheese,

Laying quietly at your ease,

Gently fanned by evening breeze --

Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go

To the great Provincial Show,

To be admired by many a beau

In the city of Toronto.

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees --

Or as the leaves upon the trees --

It did require to make thee please,

And stand unrivalled Queen of Cheese.

May you not receive a scar as

We have heard that Mr. Harris

Intends to send you off as far as

The great World's show at Paris.

Of the youth -- beware of these --

For some of them might rudely squeeze

And bite your cheek; then songs or glees

We could not sing o' Queen of Cheese.

We'rt thou suspended from baloon,

You'd cast a shade, even at noon;

Folks would think it was the moon

About to fall and crush them soon.

James McIntyre

I don't know what to say.

Don't call me Ahab

The Famous Tay Whale

BY KNIGHT OF THE WHITE ELEPHANT OF BURMAH WILLIAM MCGONAGALL

’Twas in the month of December, and in the year 1883,
That a monster whale came to Dundee,
Resolved for a few days to sport and play,
And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay.

So the monster whale did sport and play
Among the innocent little fishes in the beautiful Tay,
Until he was seen by some men one day,
And they resolved to catch him without delay.

When it came to be known a whale was seen in the Tay,
Some men began to talk and to say,
We must try and catch this monster of a whale,
So come on, brave boys, and never say fail.

Then the people together in crowds did run,
Resolved to capture the whale and to have some fun!
So small boats were launched on the silvery Tay,
While the monster of the deep did sport and play.

Oh! it was a most fearful and beautiful sight,
To see it lashing the water with its tail all its might,
And making the water ascend like a shower of hail,
With one lash of its ugly and mighty tail.

Then the water did descend on the men in the boats,
Which wet their trousers and also their coats;
But it only made them the more determined to catch the whale,
But the whale shook at them his tail.

Then the whale began to puff and to blow,
While the men and the boats after him did go,
Armed well with harpoons for the fray,
Which they fired at him without dismay.

And they laughed and grinned just like wild baboons,
While they fired at him their sharp harpoons:
But when struck with the harpoons he dived below,
Which filled his pursuers’ hearts with woe:

Because they guessed they had lost a prize,
Which caused the tears to well up in their eyes;
And in that their anticipations were only right,
Because he sped on to Stonehaven with all his might:

And was first seen by the crew of a Gourdon fishing boat,
Which they thought was a big coble upturned afloat;
But when they drew near they saw it was a whale,
So they resolved to tow it ashore without fail.

So they got a rope from each boat tied round his tail,
And landed their burden at Stonehaven without fail;
And when the people saw it their voices they did raise,
Declaring that the brave fishermen deserved great praise.

And my opinion is that God sent the whale in time of need,
No matter what other people may think or what is their creed;
I know fishermen in general are often very poor,
And God in His goodness sent it to drive poverty from their door.

So Mr John Wood has bought it for two hundred and twenty-six pound,
And has brought it to Dundee all safe and all sound;
Which measures 40 feet in length from the snout to the tail,
So I advise the people far and near to see it without fail.

Then hurrah! for the mighty monster whale,
Which has got 17 feet 4 inches from tip to tip of a tail!
Which can be seen for a sixpence or a shilling,
That is to say, if the people all are willing.

William McGonagall

1825–1902

One of Scotland’s best-known poets, William McGonagall was the working-class son of Irish handloom weavers, and was born in Edinburgh and raised in Dundee. McGonagall’s first career, as a Shakespearean actor—as Macbeth, he once reputedly refused to die onstage—informed the crowd-pleasing performance that was central to his second career as a poet. He had an epiphany at the age of 52 that prompted him to devote the rest of his life to poetry. His romantic verse—often sparked by recollections of war or natural disaster—is strictly narrative, without lyrical or metaphorical gestures, a style the Guardian’s James Campbell dubs “poetry of information.” His poems have been criticized for their lack of imagery and lapses in rhythm and meter, and his style has been frequently parodied. His work is immediately recognizable and memorable, however, and emotionally driven.
McGonagall published only a single volume of poems in his lifetime, Poetic Gems(1890), but made a living selling broadsides of his work and offering dramatic performances of it. He traveled extensively despite his limited means—including a 50-mile trek on foot to see Queen Victoria (he was refused at the gate)—and late in life claimed to have been given the title “Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant of Burmah” by the king of Burma. Though the story is today presumed to be a hoax, McGonagall adopted the name for the rest of his career. He died in Edinburgh in 1902 in poverty and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

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Bad poetry? Oh noetry!

The Tay Bridge Disaster


Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

William Topaz McGonagall (March 1825 – 29 September 1902) was a Scottish weaver, doggerel poet and actor. He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work.

He wrote about 200 poems, including his notorious "The Tay Bridge Disaster" and "The Famous Tay Whale", which are widely regarded as some of the worst in English literature. Groups throughout Scotland engaged him to make recitations from his work and contemporary descriptions of these performances indicate that many listeners were appreciating McGonagall's skill as a comic music hall character. Collections of his verse remain popular, with several volumes available today.

McGonagall has been acclaimed as the worst poet in British history. The chief criticisms are that he is deaf to poetic metaphor and unable to scan correctly. McGonagall's fame stems from the humorous effects these shortcomings generate in his work. The inappropriate rhythms, weak vocabulary, and ill-advised imagery combine to make his work amongst the most unintentionally amusing dramatic poetry in the English language. His work is in a long tradition of narrative ballads and verse written and published about great events and tragedies, and widely circulated among the local population as handbills. In an age before radio and television, their voice was one way of communicating important news to an avid public. (Wikipedia)

Please note. I have absolutely nothing to say about this McGonagall. Like the excruciating soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, he was good at being bad, and people liked it. I love bad poetry, but I was unable to find anything at all that pleased me tonight. It was either gross and full of fucks and sucks, which I didn't want, or trying too hard to be either good or bad. The truly bad has that effortless quality which we associate with greatness. 

I did a post ages ago, Valentine poems that were sublimely bad. But it's hard to find stuff on just that right frequency where you want to howl with bliss. 

A lot of the stuff featured on bad poetry web sites is just too good. Bad poems by the great poets have to be just a LITTLE bit good, because these are, after all, real poets. An awful lot of it is just boring, and if bad poetry equals boring poetry, there is entirely too much of it around. 

I remember the dialect poetry I got so stuck on a few years ago, but it too can wear out its welcome or even verge on the racist. The Sonnet on Stewed Prunes by William F. Kirk comes to mind:

Ay ant lak pie-plant pie so wery vell;
Ven ay skol eat ice-cream, my yaws du ache;
Ay ant much stuck on dis har yohnnie-cake
Or crackers yust so dry sum peanut shell.
And ven ay eat dried apples, ay skol svell
Until ay tenk my belt skol nearly break;
And dis har breakfast food, ay tenk, ban fake:
Yim Dumps ban boosting it, so it skol sell.
But ay tal yu, ef yu vant someteng fine,
Someteng so sveet lak wery sveetest honey,
Vith yuice dat taste about lak nice port vine,
Only it ant cost hardly any money, -
Ef yu vant someteng yust lak anyel fude,
Yu try stewed prunes. By yiminy! dey ban gude.

These poems are meant not to be read, but performed, in the fine old tradition of poets getting up and giving long windbag recitals of their work. Being an elocutionist was actually a profession then, something you made money at. McGonagall got up and performed, and so did Kirk, and that other guy, what was his name -  

You bad leetle boy, not moche you care
How busy you 're kipin' your poor gran'pere
Tryin' to stop you ev'ry day
Chasin' de hen aroun' de hay--
W'y don't you geev' dem a chance to lay?
Leetle Bateese!

Off on de fiel' you foller de plough
Den w'en you 're tire you scare the cow
Sickin' de dog till dey jomp the wall
So de milk ain't good for not'ing at all--
An' you 're only five an' a half dis fall,
Leetle Bateese!

Too sleepy for sayin' de prayer to-night?
Never min' I s'pose it 'll be all right
Say dem to-morrow--ah! dere he go!
Fas' asleep in a minute or so--
An' he 'll stay lak dat till de rooster crow,
Leetle Bateese!

William Henry Drummond, whom we "took" in school ad nauseam, the teacher actually reading these poems aloud to us in "French" dialect.

Awful.

There's always a postscript, isn't there? A couple of years ago when I wanted to find something on Drummond, there was barely anything. I couldn't even scrape together a list of his works.  Now there are entire sites of nothing but his poetry - his awful poetry - all that wretched stuff we choked down in school about "de stove-pipe hole" and all that appalling shit. Not only that - there are now dozens of YouTube videos of people reciting Drummond's awful awful poetry! I won't blight this already-too-long post with any of THAT. But it makes me realize the internet just keeps growing like a malignant fungus. And there must be an awful lot of older people like me interested in setting up poetry web sites, because surely no one under the age of 60 would be able to gag down a monstrosity  like "Leetle Bateese".

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