[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by john savoie

You get what you pay for.
I applaud them for keeping it free.

That's the reason I entered a poem—the fact it was free! (What do you have to lose?)
I agree with your other thoughts, too, John.

[Roger Slater]

John, I visited the Picasso museum in Barcelona about 15 years ago and it was truly amazing. I thought I knew how great he was before I went, but I had no idea.

[John Isbell]

Roger: yes. For instance, what he was doing at age 15.

Cheers,
John

[Allen Tice]

I vent in its general direction.

[Ann Drysdale]

Wergle Flomp?

[RCL]

Folks, I can't take credit for this coverage. I tried a link but it didn't work. It does now:

https://clevelandpoetics.blogspot.co...gle-flomp.html



Ann, maybe this?

Bad Poetry 2: the great Wergle Flomp

Continuing the discussion of bad poetry...

There is, of course, poetry that's so bad that it's good.. and then there's poetry that's even worse than that. That's where Wergle Flomp comes in.

The origin of Wergle Flomp is recounted by David Taub It has to do with the website poetry.com-- formerly known as the National Library of Poetry. (If you want to know about National Library of Poetry, Dave Barry explains all.) Turns out, what they do is to have an open poetry contest to which people are solicited to send poems... and then everybody who sends in a poem gets "selected" as a semifinalist to be in their anthology... a copy of which they can buy for only fifty dollars. Along with plaques, and other memorabilia. At, say five thousand "selected" poets, fifty dollars per poet-- that's a nice chunk of cash. There are exposes here and there.

But back to Flomp. What David Taub wondered was, just how bad can a poem be, and still get that letter "In celebration of the unique talent that you have displayed..." How bad can it be? He tried worse and worse poetry. Like, Stephen AbutLOL's "Wots a pome," featuring the immortal lines:

Very serious stuff is pomes
you can write them in your homes.

and which got that letter ... your poem was selected for publication, and as a contest semi-finalist, on the basis of your unique talent and artistic vision."

Even the pseudonym "Wergle Flomp", writing a poem that made no sense whatsover, got the letter.

So in the spirit of the great Wergle Flomp ("flobble bobble blop/yim yam widdley woooo/oshtenpopple gurby"), the Wergle Flomp poetry contest was inaugurated. The rules of the contest are simple: what's the absolutely worst possible poem that can be submitted to the poetry.com contest-- or the international library of poetry or any similar contest? It's a contest for poetry that's not just bad, but excruciatingly bad

A really good--by which I mean, really bad--Wergle Flomp poem is earnest and so so tone deaf as to be embarassing.
I'm happy to point out, by the way, that Cleveland features in the first stanza of the winning Wergle Flomp poem from 2008, Benjamin Taylor Lally's "FIRST EDITION, 2008":

1.
O, I also enjoy singing about America
When I am in the shower
O song—O awesome song,
O the mouth-song that comes out of my mouth,
Like food when I don't feel good.
O-hi-O, Cleveland is your capitol.
O, how this pen fits in my hand,
Like a magic microphone or something.
When I write, the words just plop out of it,
Out of me,
Me the poet.
I am a poet.

Hey, we're famous. Or something.

So, if you really want to see some bad poetry-- check it out.

[Jim Moonan]

x
Even sitting on the sidelines with no skin in the game... what John Savoie said.
x

[Michael Cantor]

Read Ralph's comments. Is he the only one who got it? The contest celebrates awful poetry. That's the point. The awfuller the better.

Good to hear you're in Barcelona this summer, John. I'm having a bit of trouble relating that information to the thread , but what the hell - I don't travel much these days, and take all my vacations vicariously, through you, and you rarely disappoint. Can we expect a poem shortly?

(Confession - I spent the better part of a day at the massive Picasso exhibit at the Met in New York in 2015, was knocked on my ass, returned home with books and catalogs and determination - and still haven't been able to get a decent poem out of it.) Not good enough for publication, too good for Wergle Flomp. Story of my life.

Added in. Now I'm confused. I'm certain that when the contest was initiated it was aimed at deliberately writing and finding and awarding the worst poetry imaginable - as Ralph describes it. But the present web site doesn't mention that. Have they changed their criteria? In which case this year's winner is awful. Or have they just nastily stopped explaining their criteria - in which case this year's winner is well deserving of the recognition. Dunno.

[Roger Slater]

Michael, this isn't one of their contests to purposely write bad, as they have done with their fiction contests of that sort. Even with those contests, however, the idea was to write "bad" in a way that was secretly good, sort of like a contest in The Spectator might have it. Entertainingly bad, a parody of bad, not unmitigated and irredeemable bad (as the winner of this particular competition most certainly is).

I only sent in a poem because there's no fee, it took less than a minute to enter, and there was always the theoretical possibility of winning a cash prize.

[John Isbell]

Hi Michael,

Yes, I was briefly in Barcelona this summer. You are correct.

Regards,
John