[Gregory Dowling]

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:

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 If nothing else, these poems have power as historical documents, giving us an insight into the imperialist mentality (though perhaps that’s a rather cheap line of defence).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.

[Wendy Sloan]

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 ...

[E. Shaun Russell]

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.

[John Whitworth]

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.

[Gregory Dowling]

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?)

[Laura Heidy-Halberstein]

Originally Posted by Gregory Dowling

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

[Peter Wyton]

How about Housman's "The goal stands up, the keeper/stands up to keep the goal"

[ignazio salvatore basile]

I’m not so sure we can distinguish between bad and good poetry. I would prefer to talk of bad and good readers. Hence I think it can be said the same for bad good poems. I mean that if someone reads a Dante’s or a Keat’s sonnet and he/she does not like it, we have a bad reader (not certainly a bad poet!). May be we could discuss of poetry and other stuff ( which is not poetry). There is a long, unbroken line that links up poetry from the ancient greek-roman poets until nowdays’s and that’s a line of love, brotherhood, friendship and generally good, deep sentiments. Poetry belongs to Good, the other stuff don’t. We cannot call poetry writings on Denying-Holocaust Naziskin or writers instigating racism or texts stirring up with hate. However who should decide what is good or bad poetry? It’s the same for any other kind of art. Van Gogh was not certainly considered a good artist, while alive! But who dares today to say is not it? It’s better then to leave any judgement to the readers.

[Richard Epstein]

"However who should decide what is good or bad poetry?"

Me.

Or, if I won't do, Johnson's common reader: “I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.”


RHE