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Unread 03-12-2009, 06:20 PM
Gregory Dowling Gregory Dowling is offline
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Default Good Bad Poetry

In an essay on Rudyard Kipling (still one of the best things ever written on him), George Orwell used the term “good bad poetry”, to describe such works as “Gunga Din” and “Danny Deever”. He said that:

Quote:
Unless one is merely a snob and a liar it is impossible to say that no one who cares for poetry could not get any pleasure out of such lines as:

For the wind is in the palm trees and the temple bells they say,
‘Come you back, you British soldier, come you back to Mandalay!’
I don’t know how useful a term “good bad poetry” is, but I guess we all know what he means by it. I am wondering what other examples people might like to propose. (I would say that Kipling no longer needs any special pleading.) Or to put it in another way, are there poets (or just individual poems) that people here secretly and perhaps rather shamefacedly enjoy?

I’ll come straight out and say I’ve always enjoyed a number of poems by Sir Henry Newbolt. Take a poem like "He Fell Among Thieves". I can see all the faults in it: the sentimental picture of England, the tendency to fall back on clichéd images – but at the same time I enjoy the narrative vigour of the versification and the colourful use of the exotic setting and place-names. There are other poems of his, like "Vitai Lampada", that are clearly as unpolitically correct as you could get, but which nonetheless have an uncanny quality of memorability; part of it is the way he manages to create a setting and an ethos with a strict economy of details (“A bumping pitch and a blinding light, / An hour to play and the last man in…”). If nothing else, these poems have power as historical documents, giving us an insight into the imperialist mentality (though perhaps that’s a rather cheap line of defence).

Anyway, I’d like to hear other people’s confessions, so if you’ve always got a sneaking enjoyment out of some totally unfashionable names like W.E. Henley or Sabine Baring-Gould or John Greenleaf Whittier, now’s the time to come out and declare it boldly. Here could even be your chance to stand up for Rod McKuen or Pam Ayres.
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Unread 03-12-2009, 08:55 PM
Wendy Sloan Wendy Sloan is offline
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I'm wondering if by "good bad" we really mean effective poetry that's either hopelessly out of style or that otherwise strikes a false note for us (too corny; too sentimental; archaic language etc.) for whatever reason. I don't mean to suggest that this list of potential reasons is exhaustive or all-inclusive -- maybe there are an infinite number of possible reasons for that false note ...
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Unread 03-12-2009, 11:05 PM
E. Shaun Russell E. Shaun Russell is offline
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Well, for my part, I don't care if a poem is considered "good" or "bad" by anyone else...if it affects me positively, I like it...simple as that. I've never really understood the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality of a lot of the literati. Like what you like. There's no shame in it. It's not something that needs to be surreptitious.
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Unread 03-13-2009, 12:36 AM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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I'll stand up for Pam Ayres any time. She is the Beryl Cook of poetry. Poems like 'Heaps of stuff' and 'I wish I'd looked after my teeth' are distinctive and, oh I don't know, but YOU try doing it. Not you, Gregory,since you like Newbolt, so you know what's what. Would Beachcomber count as a poet? I've mentioned him before and his 'The Cabman', or is it 'The Lincolnshire Cabman'? His real name is J.B. Morton and he's googlable. Of course these people are funny, and being funny rather sets you back in the poetry stakes. In Flann O'Brien's masterpiece 'At Swim-two-birds' there is a poem, 'A pint of plain is your onlyman' which I found unforgettable after the first reading. If I can find it I'll post it and you can see.
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Unread 03-13-2009, 04:53 AM
Gregory Dowling Gregory Dowling is offline
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Wendy, I imagine that Orwell was thinking mainly of "out of style", writing as he was in the wake of Modernism. I suppose when I started the thread I had the idea of soliciting defences of poets whose reputation is generally low today. I partly had in mind a thread from a while back, started (if I remember correctly) by Mark Allinson, in defence of Swinburne. I thought it might be interesting to extend it also to contemporary names who are usually looked down on by intellectual or "highbrow" (there's an old-fashioned word for you) circles (or "literati", to use Shaun's term).

E. Shaun, that's the attitude! I'd like to think that I'm the same, but I have to admit to feeling peer pressure and I'd probably think twice before pulling out a Pam Ayres collection at an academic conference.

Having said which, John, I will admit that undoubtedly from reasons of pure snobbishness I had never actually read anything by Pam Ayres at all. I've googled the two poems you mention and I will say that they're fun; there is a distinctive voice but also it strikes me (unless the versions I found on-line are defective), there's some metrical and syntactical clumsiness; here's a stanza from "I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth":

So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."

"Heaps of Stuff" struck me as much more successful and I can definitely identify with it.

Look forward to the Flann O'Brien poem, which I don't know.

Now anyone going to stand up for Rod McKuen (another poet I confess to not knowing at all, except by misrepute)?

(p.s. to John: excuse my curiosity, do you go to bed very late or get up very early?)
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Unread 03-13-2009, 06:18 AM
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Laura Heidy-Halberstein Laura Heidy-Halberstein is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregory Dowling View Post
Now anyone going to stand up for Rod McKuen (another poet I confess to not knowing at all, except by misrepute)?
Ok, I admit to being a sucker for this one - I'm not sure if it started out a poem and ended up a song or the other way around - either way, I must confess I've never heard it sung but the words have stuck with me for probably 40 years or so - especially the last verse which still makes me mist up.

http://www.peterpaulandmary.com/music/27-m03.htm
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Unread 03-13-2009, 06:54 AM
Michael Cantor Michael Cantor is offline
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Carl Sandburg. Like Kipling, he's sometimes just plain good, but often good bad. (Through my early teens, Kipling and Sandburg and a book of dirty limericks, published in England - and found hidden under my father's shirts - were the only poetry I read. And I read them joyfully and omniverously. Particularly the limericks.)
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Unread 03-13-2009, 09:34 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Lo, I emailed you this, as well, but I'll post it here. This is a Rhapsody link to the "Mary" solo album where she sings the McKuen song:

Listen to The Solo Recordings [1971-1972] on Rhapsody: http://www.rhapsody.com/goto?rcid=al...lay&lsrc=RN_im
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Unread 03-13-2009, 11:57 AM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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When things go wrong and will not come right
Though you do the best you can.
When life looks black as the hour of night
A pint of plain is your only man.

When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran.
When all you have is a heap of debt
A pint of plain is your only man.

When health is strange and your heart feels strange
And your face is pale and wan.
When doctors say that you need a change
A pint of plain is your only man

When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan.
When hunger grows as your meals are rare
A pint of plain is your only man

In times of trouble and lonely strife
You have still got a darling plan.
You can still turn to a brighter life,
A pint of plain is your only man.

Well, I don't know about BAD now I look at it. Flann O'Brien is also Myles na Gopaleen and Brian O'Nolan. I think At Swim-two-birds is the finest Irish novel ever written. Knocks spotsoff Ulysses, being a). shorter and b). funnier. And the columns he wrote for the Irish whateveritwas are works of genius. Try the one about the people who (for a fee) will read your books for you and make then look as if they have been read. A pint of plain is a pint of stout, by the way.
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Unread 03-13-2009, 04:58 PM
Wendy Sloan Wendy Sloan is offline
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Doesn't seem bad to me.
McKuen -- yeah, that's bad stuff.
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