I have a special fondness in my heart for bad poetry. Partly because I’m a terrible poet myself so I can’t help but identify with fellow terrible poets. And also partly because, as I’ve discussed before, I think there’s a lot to be gained by disregarding the rules of “good” writing–how else are you supposed to further your craft if you’re not willing to take risks?
So in the spirit of taking risks, and of totally missing the mark, there’s Very Bad Poetry, an online journal featuring such gems as these:
“crack monkeys” by matthew arens
oh, my god
what have i done today
i spiked all of the towns bannanas with crack
and the town fell into dissaray
cuz the crack monkeys are on parade
poo flys through the air and banana marmalade is made
cuz the crack monkeys broke out of thier cage
this monkey carnage made the front page!
what have i done, what have i started, monkeys took my wallet, then sat on my face and farted
monkeys attacked me, and ripped my clothes to rags
but it was also funny cuz the monkeys where dressed up like old hags
and where holding banana filled shopping bags
“wangster gangsta jew” by Isaac Berger
im a wangster
im a gangsta
im a jew
that doesnt rhyme
so ill pop you
woohoo!
boo!
im scary
and just a little hairy
im straight
that doesnt rhyme
so ill pop you
woohoo!
Hm. This poetry reminds me of two things. First, Flarf, because it’s so horribly bad that it’s actually good. And second, a new column from McSweeney’s entitled “YouTube comment or e.e. cummings?”, which is exactly what it sounds like and very much worth a read. It’s interesting–some of the e.e. cummings lines sound surprisingly plain out of context, while apparently YouTubers are spontaneous poets, waxing philosophical with such comments as “What is nothing?”. Good Lord.
It makes you (or at least, me) wonder if our standards of “good” versus “bad” poetry are largely–though not entirely–arbitrary. Because if it’s possible to confuse a YouTube comment with an e.e. cummings line, and if “bad” poems now have an online journal dedicated solely to them (and also–if people are reading and enjoying these bad poems, then doesn’t that make them by default just a little bit good?), it’s entirely plausible that some bad poetry is not really bad–rather, merely mislabeled and underappreciated. Maybe we’ll be reading an anthology of YouTube Comment Poetry somewhere in the near future. Maybe bad poetry (that is, poems that are written with the specific goal of being awful) is the new avant-garde.
Eh, but then again–maybe not. It’s possible I’m being too forgiving here, what with my affinity with bad poets and all that. What do you think?
