"you wore out your welcome / with random precision / rode on the steel breeze"

[larryhammer]

As promised, more bad poetry. Gentle readers, I give you The Joy of Bad Verse by Nicholas T. Parsons (William Collins Sons, London: 1988).

Note what's missing: it's "by" not "edited by". This is not an anthology of bad verse -- this is a book about bad verse and the poetasters who write it. Which means that while this is indeed larded with generous helpings of the Good Bad Stuff, they are here as examples. The point of this book is not the poetry, but the deliciously British snark hung upon that scaffolding. Hung, dressed, paneled, bricked up, and painted.

That said, this is an indispensable acquisition for connoisseurs of the snarktarget -- Parsons has not relied on previous bad verse anthologies but gone to the sources, uncovering many gems not covered elsewhere. And he has read extensively, with much evident pain as well as delight. He even read more of Alfred Austin's poetry than allowed under the Geneva Convention and lived to tell us the tale. One could want more extensive examples, but the extensive annotated bibliography points the ways to finding it oneself.

The books is in two halves, the first of thematic chapters (patriotism, didacticism, eulogies, laureatshippery, and so on) and the other biographical (a sort of hall of shame). I'm more comfortable with the first, as some of the biographical potshots are on the queasy side. Parsons is better with the occasions of badness than the personnel. Yet even with the former, something is lacking -- namely, that while he lets fall here and there signs that he has strong opinions about the titular topic, where the joy of bad verse comes from, he never articulates it as an explicit theory.* He assumes it, without explanation or defense, and spends more time snarking on the samples.

Being required by law to include a sample with every review, I'll bend the Geneva Convention with a bit of Alfred Austin from his pre-poet laureate days, expounding upon the reported wounding and capture of Garibaldi by royalist forces:

Well, then, know we would not barter this never-flinching martyr
For the very largest charter we could coax from "Right Divine",
That his blood upon your ermine only makes us more determine
To exterminate the vermin who have baulked his grand design.

And you think a wounded hero may hereafter count as zero
And the every desperate Nero rules the cities which he burns;
That a wild steed caught and snaffled means a nation wholly baffled
And its future may be raffled in your diplomatic urns!

Yes, Austin really used the stanza from Poe's "The Raven" in political propaganda. But then, he gave the title England's Darling to an epic about King Alfred.

All of which just goes to show you must get this book. Must.

* For further reading on the topic, see the essay "The Beauties of Badness" by Sir John Squire, starting on page 42 of this book. His analysis of the types of badness is not very systematic, but the desultory argument is consonant with what one can deduce of Parsons' ideas. Plus, it (and the following column) quotes many excellent examples not covered by Parsons.

---L.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Those stanzas sound eerily like W.S. Gilbert...

[larryhammer]

There may be a reason. Me, I keep hearing them intoned by Vincent Price.

---L.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I need to fit those stanzas to a tune supplied by Arthur Sullivan.

Edit: I swear I did not read angevin2's comment before posting.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Heeee! There has got to be one that fits. I keep hearing it to a bit from Yeomen of the Guard (I cannot remember the real words for the life of me, but it's the part where Shadbolt bullshits about shooting Fairfax), but it goes off the rails in the second line...

[larryhammer]

Hmmm -- this would have been written around 1872, give or take a year, just as G&S were getting started as a partnership.

ETA: No, wait, earlier -- probably the expedition against Rome in 1862 or its aftermath in 1866. So pre-G&S.

---L.

[sovay]

Edit: I swear I did not read angevin2's comment before posting.

I think it's inevitable; same. I can see the likeness to "The Raven," but the stresses fall in a rattlier rhythm, and the rapid-fire internal rhyme ("That his blood upon your ermine only makes us more determine / To exterminate the vermin . . .") rather dooms it to demand recitation by a patter baritone. Also I'm not sure it's possible to deploy "snaffled" in any context whatsoever—never mind the rhymes—without comic effect. "And its future may be raffled in your diplomatic urns" sounds like a lost line from Utopia, Limited.

[larryhammer]

I never said he rides the stanza with anything like Poe's deft hand at the reins. Rather, the rhythm seems to ride him. (A comparison of the insistence of the meter in this and the model is quite revealing.)

---L.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!!!! Haven't seen a good Bad Poetry book in years.

[larryhammer]

And it's readily available on the used book market in the US, even though it was only ever published in the UK.

---L.

[sovay]

That a wild steed caught and snaffled means a nation wholly baffled
And its future may be raffled in your diplomatic urns!

That slightly damp, percussive sound you hear on the off-beat is my ears bleeding. I am in awe.

"This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter . . ."

[larryhammer]

Awe is one possible, and even legitimate, response to Austin.

---L.