[Jayne Osborn]

Can anyone explain to me what “thoroughgoing bathos can bring sublimity” means? Maybe I’m just overtired but I can’t fathom it.
Not a Spherian in sight this time. We’re clearly all such good poets that we couldn’t manage to write a bad enough poem. (Sour grapes? Oh all right then, just a little bit!)

(Next comp on new thread)

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION NO 170 you were invited to outdo Theo Marzials, said to have written the worst poem ever. Marzials ended his days in a room in a Devon farmhouse. Beside the bed, occupied day and night, stood a saucer of sliced beetroot, the smell of which mingled with the fumes of chlorodyne, the smoke of an oil lamp and the steam of a perpetually simmering stockpot.
Many entries made me laugh aloud, but few were truly dreadful. Indeed, as Marzials showed, thoroughgoing bathos can bring sublimity. That was the risk competitors ran. Brian Wells began with an impossible rhyme scheme: ‘Last Feb, I, Seb, a pleb, low ebb, / pulled deb, U, reb celeb, on web.’ It guaranteed a fascination that would not allow it to reach the depths.
Gillian Ewing’s narrator mourned her run-over dog, which looked as though ‘that pillock Damien Hirst / Was trying to shock us more than ever / By finding something new to sever. / Plus all that dirty fur and bones / Spread on the road mixed up withstones.’ You see? It becomes interesting and we want to read on. Not bad enough.
Commiserations to these, and congratulations to those below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Mae Scanlan, who created a line of classic dreadfulness: ‘An awesome compost gift’.

O sad, sad, sad the autumn leaves
That fall from Mother Tree,
Who stands there, rigidly, and grieves
As they drop; one, two, three.

A sudden gust dislodges more,
Which slowly earthward drift.
They pile up fast on Nature’s floor,
An awesome compost gift.

So many shapes that once were green,
That now have lost their pigment!
Those gems that no more will be seen,
Except within a figment

Of my recall. I cannot stop
This terrible ordeal.
They keep it up – they drop and fl op,
But oh, the woe I feel!
Mae Scanlan

I used to have a pretty little cat
I called her Pussy-Willow.
She liked to sleep by the fire on a mat
or sometimes on a pillow.

Her fur was long and really silky-soft.
In the back door she had her own cat-flap.
I’d brush her well and oft and oft
she’d sit upon my lap.

She liked to hunt in the back garden
and chase the birds what fluttered.
She killed little mice without begging their pardon.
What came next had me really gutted.

Of my poem this verse it is the last.
It tells of a really really sad disaster.
My little Pussy-Willow could run really fast
but my motor car was faster.
Pamela Trudie Hodge

When I was quite young, life was happy and gay
For we all had a job we could do.
I’d bus to the office and type, every day,
Which most of my best friends did too.

I wrote cheerful verses and no one would scoff,
In fact, old ladies liked me a lot.
Two wars came and went, but I couldn’t switch off
However depressing things got.

Beware reputations that glisten and glow
In the bright silver moonlight of dreams.
A manic depressive is lurking below.
The joy is far less than it seems.

For I am stuck fast in this metrical trap
Which I rattle all day and all night
And most poets think it is terrible crap
And often I think they are right.
Jean Hayes

Oh shall I live or shall I die?
Was it all truth? Was it a lie?
Oh dear! Life’s drear yet dear.
Tick tock.

Sometimes I crawl and sometimes fl y.
At times I’m low. At others high.
Oh dear! Life’s drear yet dear.
Tick tock.

Lie in the ditch or see the sky?
Shall I be happy? Cease to try?
Oh dear! Life’s drear yet dear.
Tick tock.

Why is man born? To wait to die?
While I debate, life passes by.
Oh dear! Life’s drear yet dear.
Tick tock.
Dorothy Pope

[Roger Slater]

I can see why Mae won. She's one of my favorite light versifiers and she appears so often alongside Spherians that I think of her as one.

[Jayne Osborn]

I agree, Bob. In fact, I had to check the Members List before I posted the thread as I wasn't certain whether Mae is one of us or not. (She should be! )
I thought Pamela's was good (I mean bad!); she's an accomplished poet too.

Jayne

[Ann Drysdale]

Delighted to see Pamela here. I gave her first prize in a competition I judged last year - for a Very Good poem.

[Rob Stuart]

I couldn't be bothered with this one/wasn't up to the challenge (take your pick). I have written many bad poems, of course, but never deliberately. Mae deserved to win. I liked her rubai for the Speccie very much too.

[Martin Parker]

Mae Scanlan really deserves this one, I reckon. It is truly awful for its earnestly amateurish banality -- all of which is made to appear so easy to achieve. Why did not more of us try this one?

Incidentally, Mae has the distinction of having appeared in every edition of Lighten up Online. She may even be the only one to have done this.

[Brian Allgar]

"Many entries made me laugh aloud, but few were truly dreadful."

What a perverse bit of judging! I'd assumed that they wanted poems masquerading as bad ones, but that were secretly good poems - and funny.

Nope. What they wanted was bona fide bad poems. Funniness was apparently disqualified.

And what is one to make of the fourth winner, where the last two lines of every stanza are identical, don't rhyme with anything (apart from the rather feeble internal rhyme 'dear/drear/dear[again]), and, at the risk of repeating myself, aren't funny?

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's supposed to be the season of goodwill to all men - except competition judges.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

I think Mae's poem is expertly simple: doesn't seem fabricated but is ultimately dreadful, seems written in completely serious and authentic sincerity. The thing that I do not like about its choice may be my own ass-u-me-d thoughts about the original challenge. I had thought that the "tragedy" was supposed to relate some human tragedy, not some silly impression of a non-tragic situation being a tragedy.

In fact none of the selected poems seem to do much beyond that "presenting a silly situation or fake tragedy as if it is the Worst Thing To Have Ever Happened in the World" approach. Maybe the final one, although that one is similar but just forgoes mentioning anything behind the "tragedy." I had thought that writing badly about something that is actually tragic...was the goal. But no, fake tragedy wins.

Originally Posted by Brian Allgar

And what is one to make of the fourth winner, where the last two lines of every stanza are identical, don't rhyme with anything (apart from the rather feeble internal rhyme 'dear/drear/dear[again]), and, at the risk of repeating myself, aren't funny?

But Brian, didn't you just also say, "bona fide bad poems"?


Edit: However, going back to read the Marzials poem....I can see how assumption may have led me astray. Still, there are images of human death, human suffering, overblown in his. Authentic tragedy is hinted, even if the N's response is overblown to whatever situation is behind it.

[Brian Allgar]

But Brian, didn't you just also say, "bona fide bad poems"?

I did indeed, Curtis, but "bad" doesn't necessarily mean "poetically inept". (Which, of course, Mae's entry was certainly not.)