[Michael Cantor]

I write light verse. Others write doggerel.

Getting beyond that, I guess it's no different than attempting to quantify the difference between serious poetry and doggerel. It's a matter of skilled and/or clever use of language, unique application of images, using the various poet's tools in a unique way rather than throwing out a clatter of cliches. I could go on and on, but either you recognize it or you don't, and there is obviously a large area where people will disagree, but by and large accomplished poets know the difference. I sometimes see "doggerel" used here (not too often - it's not a nice thing to say) and in every case except one (when it was used to describe one of my poems) I agreed.

But if there are specifics - rather than "feel" - for drawing the line between light verse and doggerel, I'd be interested in hearing them. To me, "doggerel" is essentially a synonym for "crappy" - but "crappy" in a simplistic, cliched way, rather than an overwritten and opaque way.

[Catherine Chandler]

The term "doggerel" can also be applied to verse that's not intended to be light. There's lots of serious doggerel out there.

[Roger Slater]

Many dictionaries seem to think doggerel means that the meter is clumsy or irregular, but I don't think that's how most of us use the term. We generally use it, I think, to mean verse that is very badly written. The flaws can be meter, rhythm, contorted syntax, unclever forced rhymes, or any combination of the foregoing. I agree with Catherine that doggerel can be intended to be serious, though I think to be doggerel and not just a bad poem the flaws have to produce at least an unintentional comedic effect, i.e., it needs to be so bad that it's almost comical.

[Jayne Osborn]

One of my friends (not a poet, as such, though she can and does churn out a good poem from time to time) always refers to poems that rhyme, and are funny, as doggerel. To her they're not ''proper poetry''.

We've had countless discussions on this and I object to her reasoning. Light verse or humorous poems are not automatically doggerel, though many are, I won't deny, but so are many serious poems.

To me, doggerel means it's crap, similar to Michael's comment. Yep, if it makes you cringe, for any reason, it's most likely doggerel.

. . . Or, as I've tried to promote in the past, there is poetry - and there is poo-etry!

Jayne

[John (J.D.) Smith]

To open a can of worms, where does that place, for example, Ogden Nash?

[Roger Slater]

That's easy, I think, and maybe helps us find a definition of doggerel that includes the idea that the poet doesn't really know what he is doing, and there's little evidence of craft or skill. Ogden Nash, when he flouts meter and invents words to create a rhyme, is clearly doing so consciously and as a technique he knows how to deploy in an expert manner. If we ever had the sense that his lines resulted from ignorance or an inability to count beats, or that his rhymes resulted from a tin ear, we wouldn't enjoy him at all.

[Orwn Acra]

Nash strove to be "a good bad poet" as he called himself. He's the poetic equivalent of John Waters or Jeff Koons, who also used kitsch and camp for higher purposes. In other words, Nash is not doggerel.