A Conversation for Ask h2g2

Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 1

quotes

The Vogons were notably bad at it, but what is it about bad poetry which makes it so very excruciable?


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 2

Rod

Perhaps you should talk to someone who has no experience of good poetry?

(I hesitate to suggest ~anyone~ from Canada who writes for smiley - thepost)
smiley - smiley


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 3

ITIWBS

Bad poetry is untruthful, ungrammatical, and bent all out of shape to fit a poetical form.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 4

Yelbakk

In most cases, bad poetry results from a "lines gotta rhyme"-understanding of what makes a poem. So in order to fit in a word that rhymes with the previous line, bad poets will go for either the most obvious rhmyes (moon-June, it's even worse in German: heart rhymes with pain - Herz / Schmerz. Can you imagine all the crap going on around that?) or the most constructed rhymes (sorrow-Kilimanjaro).

What makes this rhyming disease even worse is that in order to fit in the rhyming word, bad poets will destroy any sense of meter they have (most often unintentionally) used in their verses:
"Last year it was my greatest sorrow
That I could not climb up snowy Mount Kilimanjarow"

Generally bad poets have no notion of meter. All they look out for is the end rhyme. All other poetic devices are beyond their understanding. I, for one, believe that meter is much more important than rhyme. Look at Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" or, even more compelling, Milton's "Paradise Lost". The force of such poetry comes entirely from the metric construction.

I don't even think that bad poetry (baetry, maybe?) comes from the content matter. Good poems can be written about anything: the great human emotions as well as, say, the Large Haldron Collider or one's difficulties with bowel movement. What makes good poetry good is that it manages to give its subject an interesting perspective. Baetry manages to make even the most intense emotion banal.

Y.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 5

Hoovooloo

It's worse than that, though. Bad poetry demands to be taken seriously. If you've got something to say, it's perfectly possible to say it in prose. To versify implies you think what you have to say is more important, more profound than that... so when what you have to say is in fact just the same banal s**t everyone else has said, and, worse, said incompetently, the betrayal is greater. It's the literary equivalent of shooting your movie in black and white.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 6

quotes

>>Bad poetry demands to be taken seriously.

Especially if it's read aloud in "that" voice.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 7

~ jwf ~ scribblo ergo sum

>> the literary equivalent of shooting your movie in black and white. << I'm rendered speechless, unable to detect any hint of irony in that sentence that would make it palatable. Be warned! The Polaroid camera is going to make a huge come-back as a digital camera with an attached printer. Like the Polaroid system, the printer will require a cartridge of photo-print paper containing enough inks in all colour spectra to render the image. Maybe ten prints per cart. B&W cartridges could hold twice as many print sheets. Copyright ~jwf~ 2013, Patents pending. ~jwf~ Bonus links to Bad Poemetry: A87768670 A87779452 and of course Jabberwock's famous: http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F2606954?thread=5718865


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 8

Hoovooloo


Why is that unpalatable to you?

Choosing verse over prose is an artistic choice, just as is choosing to shoot in B&W over colour when making a movie.

It can be a perfectly valid artistic choice if your writing/movie is otherwise good. It can be another reason to hate it if your writing/movie is in all other ways rubbish.

Note: I'm not saying B&W movies are rubbish. I'm saying SOME B&W movies are B&W because their directors were pretentious pricks, and this is evident in other ways when you watch the film. I think the analogy works. YMMV.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 9

Yelbakk

The choice to write it as poetry rather than prose has to make sense. (If it makes sense to demand that a choice make sense...)

The question is, what does poetry add that cannot otherwise be expressed?
The German word for poem is "Gedicht", which can be broken down as "something that has been condensed". Very often the merit of poetry is to express something in a few words that would otherwise take many pages. (That must be why interpretations of a 16 line poem can easily grow to 20 pages or more...)

Y.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 10

Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor

'All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.' - Umberto Eco.

I think what makes bad poetry bad is the claim that it is good poetry.

For example, William McGonagall demanded at the top of his voice that this be taken seriously:

'Be steady, keep silence, my lads, don’t be afraid,
And make me proud of my Highland Brigade;
Then followed the command, sharp and clear,
While the war notes of the 42d bagpipes smote the ear.

The soldiers, though young, were cool and steady,
And to face the enemy they were ever ready,
And still as the bare-kneed line unwavering came on
It caused the Russians to shake and look woebegone.'

Note the use of '42' here. smiley - whistle

On the other hand, when I was young, my family looked forward with great anticipation to the arrival of the catalogue from the Miles Kimball Company of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Interlaced among the artiful photographs of irresistible tchotchkes for sale at bargain prices were poems - in the style of Mr McGonagall.

They looked like this:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GbZLbkXrIDY/TupGcxr1oTI/AAAAAAAAC9E/eBwLAiEOliQ/s1600/baseball-bat.jpg

I think it's the context. smiley - winkeye


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 11

~ jwf ~ scribblo ergo sum

smiley - biggrin
>> Why is that unpalatable to you? <<

Because you suggest poetry is an old fashioned technology
used as an artsy-fartsy way to disguise the smell of s**t.
Or did I miss something when I read:

>>..so when what you have to say is in fact just the same banal
s**t everyone else has said, and, worse, said incompetently, the
betrayal is greater. It's the literary equivalent of shooting your
movie in black and white. <<

I know you refuse to use smileys so it's often hard to tell
if you're being ironic or just narrow-minded. I see this lack
of breadth not as a fault, just a dimensional shift you find
necessary to focus on topics of greater personal interest.

As a fan of both poemetry and B&W cinematography I found
your analogy not to my taste, hence unpalatable; to me, but
in no way is that a value judgment of your whirled view.

smiley - shrug
~jwf~


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 12

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

The line between poetry and song lyrics can be rather thin. A professor at Boston University once said that Bob Dylan was one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century. I believe that the professor was referring to Dylan's song lyrics.

Leonard Cohen started out as a poet. At some point, he began to see his poems enhanced by setting them to music.

I might also point to changes in style as a reason for thinking that once-treasured poems seem second-rate.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 13

TRiG (Ireland) A dog, so bade in office

I think I'm right in saying that, historically, most poetry was sung. I'm sure I've read that Sappho's poetry was sung, possibly with music.

TRiG.smiley - surfer


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 14

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

"I think I'm right in saying that, historically, most poetry was sung" [TRiG]

Well, the intellectuals in late 16th century Florence believed that. They attempted to bring back the ancient craft, and opera was born. I'm glad they did, as opera has become a very long-lived genre that has some passionate fans. It would be intriguing to find out what melodies the ancient Greeks used for their poems and dramas.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 15

Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor

There's a link or two in this guide entry: A87783664

Here's the Seikilos Epitaph, the oldest complete musical composition from Greece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RjBePQV4xE


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 16

~ jwf ~ scribblo ergo sum

smiley - jester
The Italian Opera thing took Europe by storm.
smiley - applause
They went on tour everywhere, even to Merry Olde Angle-land
where many legitimate playwrights and actors were suddenly
out of work, unable to compete for an audience. The legends
of the Elizabethan stage were being forgotten.

And so in 1728, one John Gay, wrote the Beggars Opera
for an English audience and the musical comedy was born.

"The play ran for sixty-two nights. Swift is said to have
suggested the subject, and Pope and Arbuthnot were
constantly consulted while the work was in progress..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gay

And that's why it is said that anyone who likes musicals
is Gay. It's an Inn joke. Just like his epitaph on a plaque
near his bones in Westminster Abbey:

"Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, and now I know it."

smiley - jestersmiley - towel
~jwf~


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 17

ITIWBS

In the late 1960s Film, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", the poems of the Scottish poet Robert Burns were set to music and sung.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 18

Alfster

Hoo



Indeed, one question on Brain Of Britian last week was naming a Phillip Larkin poem; they had a clip of him reading the poem.

It was basically one of those poems that sounded like he was reading a descriptive paragraph out but one line at a time - which for me is basically what a lot of poetry is.

Just because you have one sentence per line rather than having it a whole paragraph doesn't make it poetry. I'm always amazed at how many 'amazing' poems are like this.

It would be an interesting experiment to make some poems out of prose and see how experts react to them....especially if you said they a long lost poem by some famous poet.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 19

Yelbakk

"It would be an interesting experiment to make some poems out of prose and see how experts react to them....especially if you said they a long lost poem by some famous poet."

I did that with a class I was teaching!
We took normal newspaper articles, chose a paragraph and then fragmented it into lines (i.e. into verses). The first effect was, indeed, an optical one. The paragraph now *looked* like a poem. Then I had studends read the "poem". The read more slowly, more deliberately, as it were. The listeners, too, were listening (slightly, alas!) more attemptively. The text (linguists and literary scientists love to talk about "texts") was treated more carefully when it was presented as a poem. Which sort of lead us to the assumption that the difference between prose and poetry comes from the reader. What makes a poem, then? The reader!

Y.


Why is bad poetry so bad?

Post 20

~ jwf ~ scribblo ergo sum

smiley - biggrin

Recordings of poets in the early 20th century were
a great disservice to poetry. Poets are not always
good public speakers or actors and they were faced
with the new technology of audio recording. It was
all very hip and often quite profitable for the record
companies but it established a flat, almost bland
reading style that belies what a poem might be about.

That's one of the reasons why Dylan and Cohen (etc)
were so welcomed in the 1960s because they brought
vitality to their words through music.

One sad side-effect, which I probably ought not to
even mention, is that ever since, pop song writers
have gotten away with totally obscure and meaningless
lyrics and dull repeated drones of chorus. I recall
some early BeeGees lyrics that left me limp from the
pointless effort of comprehension. And yes, Neil Young
is often so obscurely subjective there is nothing there
to share except the chorus chant.

smiley - musicalnote
"Forget in Ohio"
(Repeat as necessary, ad infinitum, ad nauseum)
smiley - musicalnote

Very few true poets have ever successfully mastered
the nature of recording technology which betrays the
written word and subdues it to hollow affectations.

The current crop of pop adult alternative song writers is
evenly split between true poetry and nonsense sing-songs
hiding behind over-produced musical effects.

smiley - book
~jwf~


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