[Orwn Acra]

Richard Kostelanatz includes Nash in his A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes and starts the entry with "Surprise."

[Jayne Osborn]

Bob summed it up well.
Deliberate fooling around, that's clever, is funny whereas ignorance is not.

Ogden Nash makes you laugh. Doggerel makes you cringe. Simple.

[Lightning Bug]

Below is some advise I received shortly after I arrived at Erato in 2003, from some sage whose Identity I have long forgotten. The bad thing about it was that it didn't like my piece. The good thing about it was that it defined what a good piece should include. I have used this as a checklist for my pieces, ever since. Some might say this unknown master is responsible for all my success, and who am I to say different.

Sorry, Bugsy, but to me this one is trivial greeting card stuff of the Not-Ready-or-Deserving-of-the-Deep-End category. It's the kind of ditty that gives rhymed, metrical verse a bad name - the stuff free-versers point to when they dis' our efforts. There's been a plethora of this on Metrical, and it bothers me to see it migrating to the Deep End without something being said.
There's nothing awful about it, but neither is there anything very good. It's not particularly funny, the language is ordinary, you have an archaic rhyme-driven phrase in L6, and the meter falls apart in the final line just when you need a strong ending.
Compare this to the sophisticated rhymes and language and verbal counter-point of Lo's Monkey Girl (which you apparently felt required too much effort to read to function as Light Verse). In my opinionated opinion there is a level of craft and - and wit - in Monkey Girl that make it truly poetry, not just a rhymed ditty - and that’s what I feel is missing in your work.
*****************
[I dunno who he wrote this to – may or may not have been me]

To me, the difference between doggerel and poetry is the application of craft - wordplay, turns on language, creation of new words, puns, clever alliteration, strange and unexpected rhymes, introduction of unusual words, etc. And if you can also cross-cut that humor with additional layers of meaning or possible perception - irony, tragedy, uncertainty, political meanings - then you're cooking! I don't see any of this in your work. You appear to concentrate on simple cartoon situations and very simple rhymes (usually, only on the even lines, and too often depending on a name to help force a rhyme) and - as I indicated earlier - I don't think that's enough.

[Martin Parker]

I totally agree with Michael Cantor. Either you recognise it or you don't.

I suspect the question is most often asked, and avidly discussed, -- though obviously not here! -- by those who have not read enough good light verse to be confident enough to decide whether or not they are writing doggerel, or who may need to be told, gently, that they are!

[Jayne Osborn]

Down the road I did go,
Walking in the fresh white snow.

This is the couplet I used to quote, when I taught Creative Writing, as the perfect example of how not to write poetry.

Now that is doggerel, yet many people write stuff like that and don't realise how bad it is.

Jayne

[Ann Drysdale]

And I use this one:

"No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass."

Invariably someone will recognise it, whereupon the Ohs and Yes, buts flutter down like cherry blossom. And then discussion begins.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

No one's mentioned end-stopped lines, which I see as a major feature of doggerel. The use of run-on lines is normally required to make good verse.

Duncan

[Douglas G. Brown]

About 1964, In junior high, we studied Longfellow's Evangeline in some depth. I can remember about 2 lines of it now. But a bit of verse in a pal's "skin" magazine, which went;

She rode her bike down cobbled street,
A bouncy ride on tender seat;
And as she passed, I heard her say,
"The last damned time I go this way.",

I will probably still remember when I am on my deathbed.

Some doggerel has a certain tendency to be memorable, despite its lack of poetic grace.

Chaucer's tale of Sir Tophas was interrupted by the host, who derided it as doggerel, not worth a turd. Chaucer was mocking the bad verse of his day, but I think he was also enjoying himself as he wrote it. So, doggerel has a long history.

Is there a similar situation in free verse, or novels, or other arts , for that matter? That is, where a word like "doggerel" is used to describe a certain degree of badness?
Or, is it simply called bad.

[John Whitworth]

That poem is not doggerel, Douglas. Far from it.

All clerihews are doggerel. It is part of the point.

[Melissa Balmain]

Excellent thread, and you've all summed up many of the things that--to my mind--separate the poetry from the pooetry. (Great phrase, Jayne!) Off the top of my head, the only things I would add are...
1-Doggerel typically lacks the element of surprise, which is crucial not just to good light verse, but to humor in general. (Surprise can take many forms, from word choice to rhyme to unexpected points of view... and of course an unpredictable ending usually helps.)
2-Doggerel tends to be padded for the sake of meter and rhyme.
3-To me, end-stopped lines aren't necessarily a deal breaker; it depends on how they work in the poem as a whole.