"...seeds of sin, / Which every goodly feeling does destroy / And more or less his afterlife annoy"

[larryhammer]

So last weekend, my local science fiction convention allowed me to host another round-robin bad poetry reading, and you can tell the programming person is a genius because he's the one who decided to call it "Vogon Poetry." I wish I'd thought of that, and will henceforth steal use it when I propose this to other cons.

A good, or at least hilarity-filled, time was had by all. On the menu this year:

• "Tay Bridge Disaster," William McGonagall
  
• "A New Temperance Poem, in Memory of My Departed Parents, Who Were Sober Living & God Fearing People," William McGonagall
  
• "The Dundee Flower Show," William McGonagall
  
• "A Tragedy," Theophile Marzials
  
• a selection from The Insect Hunters, Edward Newman (via The Worst English Poets)
  
• a selection of Proverbial Philosophy, Martin Tupper (via The Stuffed Owl)
  
• "Ode on the Giant Cheese," James McIntyre
  
• "The Oxford Cheese Ode," James McIntyre
  
• "To the Very Great Victory Against the Traitor Counter-Revolutionaries Betraying the Workers of Hungary, 4 November 1956!," Larry Hammer

The McGonagall, Marzials, and McIntyre poems were all suitably disasterous, usually taking 4-5 people to get through each one. The Newman and Tupper were bad, but not bad in the right way.

As for my own effort, I now have empirical evidence that it is nowhere near as bad as the true masters before it. It isn't anything approaching good, but it's not wretched in that painful-to-recite sort of way. I am, it seems, simply not that skilled at misfiring language. Sorry, stevendj.

Comments

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I wish to represent for the female bad poets, including many fine Americans.

[larryhammer]

You are right -- there aren't any in this list. I did have Julia Moore on tap, but I ran out of time (the slot was shorter than last year's and I had another panel immediately after). Plus there are many other finely devastating female poets.

---L.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I think we have both agreed on the importance of the Not the Norton Anthology of Poetry in these situations, right? *

* Note: I am parodying myself being an angry feminist. If I am simply being a jerk, feel free to tell me so.

[larryhammer]

Indeed. ETA: we have so agreed.

---L.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Heh. Whew!

[larryhammer]

Disambiguation is your friend.

(I'm assuming you've met the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disambiguation_%28disambiguation%29 ?)

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oooh, is there a market for bad poetry? I have all my juvenile stuff!

[larryhammer]

Of note.

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

From the reviews, they are unremarkable. Some day I have to type up some of my best stinkers, which at least make ME laugh from their terribleness. (It could be one of those "I'm my own best audience" situations, though.)

[larryhammer]

Some are, indeed, less atrocious than others.

Go for it!

---L.

[sovay]

On the menu this year

. . . I am very impressed that no one died.

[larryhammer]

Only of laughter. It's hard to read this stuff with a straight face.

---L.

[sovay]

It's hard to read this stuff with a straight face.

I have tried with McGonagall. It's really amazing.

[larryhammer]

Yes. Yes, it is.

I especially admire his contortions of syntax just so he can reach for the most banal and predictable rhyme ever.

---L.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Although I'm sure at least some hitpoints were lost from those glares passing between the teen brother/sister readers.

[larryhammer]

True, dat.

---L.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I'm not clicking through at the moment, but augh, yes, McGonagall is pretty awful.

[larryhammer]

And it's all exactly the same. Every single poem has the exact same diction and tone, no matter whether he is celebrating or mourning or merely eulogizing the scenery.

---L.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I'm still pondering the possibilities of McGonagall fanfic. Think of all the modern tragedies and triumphs he hasn't had the chance to commemorate!

[larryhammer]

It would take a very good bad poet indeed to match matchless McGonagall. I've yet to see a pastiche that convinced.

---L.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Still, McGonagall's 9/11 poem would be a thing worth the attempting.

Though I expect his true genuis would come out in a tribute to the Space Shuttle Challenger.

(One could even riff off Tay Bridge Disaster, for the latter.)

I expect his Pearl Harbor poem is justly lost amid the general glurge though, and unable to stand out within same. Ditto his ode to the Apollo astronauts.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

McGonagall is such an easy and well-known target, he should be excluded (or given his own reading).

[larryhammer]

He makes a good audience warm-up, though. But yes, I agree -- I walked away from this year planning in the future to limit the menu to only one of his, to start with.

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

By the way, and only marginally related to poetry. I went to Xerxes (aka Serse or if you're a little immature and down on the title character, as I was afterward, Jerkses) last night, and very quickly began thinking that this work, this libretto at least, offers rich material for you. It has:

-Xerxes, kind of a jerk, and the king
-Arsamenes, not such a jerk most of the time, his brother, who is in love with
-Romilda, who is in love with Arasamenes, who is presented as a bit of a flirt, and who flirts a bit with Xerxes in Act 1 Sc i, so that he resolves to marry her, which suits
-Atalanta, Romilda's sister, just fine, as she wants Arsamenes for herself.

The sisters' father is Ariodate[s], Xerxes' number one general, a baritone in curled wig, scarlet coat, and riding boots. [Emphatically NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH ARIODANTE, a different character altogether in another Handel opera.]

Oh, and Xerxes already has a fiancée, Amastris (or Amastre in some versions), a mezzo who is cross-dressed first as the Quaker Oats Man (they costumed it in a nebulous 18c style for male characters) and as a red-coated soldier later on, and who is not too happy about his carryings-on in pursuit of Romilda.

Oh, and Arsamenes' servant, Elviro, cross-dresses as Poor Little Buttercup A Flower Girl to deliver a letter from Arsamenes to Romilda, which is intercepted by Atalanta, who tells the king that Arsamenes wrote it to her.

Oh, and Xerxes is sung by a woman (traditionally, a castrato). A countertenor does Arsamenes.

Oh, and as the opera opens, Xerxes is singing a love song (the justly famous "Ombra mai fu...") to his current beloved, a tree. He dumps the tree without a second thought when he hears Romilda sing, though.


At the very least, it ought be a fantastic manga.

[larryhammer]

Or a Takarazuka show ...

---L.