S7-DES5
On American Poetry Criticism;
& Other Dastardly –Isms
PART 8:
In Praise Of Self-Aware Doggerelists
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 4/6/02

The Clanging Music Of The Triangles   The Detested Verse Of The Manifest    Nonsense, You Say!   Wide Open Spaces   Endgame

  Poetry critics suck. I’ve said it before & will- fill in the blank. Even the few critics that are OK are just that. Conrad Aiken was a good solid critic. But he doesn’t push his ideas or assessments far enough. He would make a good point & then drop it. But he was not GREAT at it. In fact there are few essays by published poetry critics that I would even say approach greatness. But, 1 that does- & is in my view the best piece of criticism published since the 1960s- is by Robert Peters. It was originally from his Great American Poetry Bake-offs series, & collected into his Where The Bee Sucks book of essays. While the book is very hit & miss (RP betrays his affinities & debts too obviously), when he is good he is a very good critic. The great essay in question is called On Divining Rod: McKuen In The Pantheon. It is a brief but brilliant disrobing of the biases, shorthand, & faults of most poetry critics. I much recommend both book & essay. RP starts off by displaying the atrocious writing in the poems. Witness:

a) When you look back there is always the past
Even when it has vanished
But when you look forward
With your dirty knuckles and the wingless
Bird on your shoulder
What can you write

b) We scattered over the lonely seaways,
Over the lonely deserts did we run,
In dark lanes and alleys did we hide ourselves....

c) ....Here, I will stand by you, shadowless,
At the small golden door of your body till you wake
In a book that is shining.

  Pretty bad, eh? Well, McKuen wrote none of it. A, b, & c were written respectively by W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, & James Wright. Don’t ask me the poems they are from- I will not popularize truly bad art. Go read RP’s essay if you are piqued. RP quotes from 22 poems- all displaying mediocre to bad writing- yet only some are by McKuen. In truth- some of the better 1s are RM’s! RP’s point is not that RM is a good poet- he is not, & RP admits such. But he has written some passable-to-pretty good poems- poems which in a blind taste test would be indistinguishable from the anonymous & representative dreck of others. & don’t think you are gonna alibi out of that with the all poets write bad stuff jazz. No way- while a true point, RP’s point is that he selected from poems & sections that were praised specifically by other critics in the numbingly numinous way bad critics sling their brand of shit. RP waits till essay’s end to identify the bad poets by name. He also does a good job of showing RM at his best- which while far from great, is not that bad- or, at least, not as bad as the public’s been led to believe. RM is at least the equal or superior poet (in toto) to more famed but praised poetasters like Sharon Olds, Wanda Coleman, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Maya Angelou, & any of the scores (if not 100s) of anonymous MFA rejects floating out there. My recent essay on comparing the undeserved scorn heaped upon contemporary songstresses Alanis Morissette & Jewel Kilcher with the flaccid praise given their older counterparts owed alot in tone to RP’s essay.
  But I’m gonna go old RP 1 better & take on not only Rodney St. McKuen, but a gaggle of other derided crap that- surprisingly- is not really as bad as it as been insistently labeled by the critical dross with their own axes ground on popular bias. Also, I want to show that critics deride this crap not because it is any worse than the aforementioned poetasters’ crap, but because it is ‘safe’ to attack these folk because they foisted their crap without guile or pretense, & deliberately courted popular attention, praise, & remuneration. Are you reading this Adrienne Cecile Rich? This is at the core of what I mean when I differentiate titularly between self-aware doggerelists (SADs) & oblivious doggerelists (ODs) & doggerel. As example I will use the case of a Richard Brautigan vs. a John Ashbery. Let me state clearly: In no way am I espousing the notion that RB is in a poetic class with JA! Overall, Brautigan never came close to poetic greatness while JA’s Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror contains most of JA’s dozen or so great poems & is 1 of the top 20 or so American poetry books of the 20^th Century. What I do mean is this: RB knew his scribblings were not ‘really’ poems, per se- thus the brevity & humor in them. But his jottings occasionally were profound & simple in a haikuvian manner. He did not ‘stretch’ himself to reach for profundities he knew were not there in his abilities. This awareness of his own wordly abilities, & desire to remain within its cocoon, is a large source of the scorn heaped upon poets as RB, by critics who value ‘innovation’ & ‘pushing boundaries’ over actual accomplishment. In short, RB knew he could never ring the poetic bell on a scale of 100- he knew he could crest at a 70 or 75- & did not write worse crap by straining to get into the 80s. The same cannot be said for JA- especially in the last 2 decades where his poetry has, indeed, sunk to doggerel levels, mostly for doing the opposite that RB did. Flowchart is a 200 page atrocity by JA; the only long poem written in the last quarter century- by a major poet- that rivals its horror is Ted Hughes’s Gaudette. (BTW- ain’t it wonderful he’s no longer with us?). Flowchart is so self-indulgent & bloated & contains so much poor writing that I don’t doubt it contains more actual doggerel than RB wrote in his lifetime. Yet this shit (& his subsequent ripping off of his ealier incarnations) is praised only because the name JA is appended to it. JA has spent decades now, writing tripe because no editor, nor critic, dares to denude his crap for what it is. Therefore, JA is unaware of his doggerel, & his recent decades’ poetry almost always stretches absurdly (not Absurdistly) into pointless philosophy, which overwhelms his artistic limits- because he cannot/will not/does not recognize them! & I believe he (& the masses of other ODs) fundamentally CANNOT recognize them! Also, despite being a poet who, indeed, has touched greatness- a poet should truly be measured by their batting average. JA is- in this analogy- a major leaguer who hits, perhaps, .200 in the ballpark of his aims or potential. RB- while a bush leaguer- hits much higher in his less challenging league. Got it? The unfortunate thing is that good SADs like RB are not many in #. Pompous blowhard ODs like JA are legion. Yet, even in the demesne of doggerel there are gradations. Let’s turn to the 1^st of 4 of the most well-known categories of doggerel.

The Clanging Music Of The Triangles: Rod McKuen, Leonard Cohen, & the ‘poetry’ of musicians

  No, I’m not gonna talk about the ‘poetry’ (either song lyrics or actual books of doggerel) of Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Henry Rollins, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, or Jewel. But I will address the 2 poet/musicians mentioned above & show that while not good poets they are not as bad as advertised, poetically. I’ll also NOT attempt to contrast certain snippets of theirs with snippets from ‘serious’ poets-cum-poetasters. Why not? Because it is usually pointless to repeatedly show what is generally well-known throughout the poetry world to those who by dint of politics, artistic bent, or familial/sexual relationship choose to ignore: I can show that a Donald Hall or Maya Angelou is more atrocious than Poetasters A, B, & C- but to no avail to those who steadfastly refuse to see. Besides, RP already did that brilliantly, only to have his excellent essay ridiculed by the Academic refrain, ‘Well, even the best can suck sometimes!’ Instead I will focus on the positives (this is a Seek, not a Destroy, essay, after all!) in the doggerelists’ verse & let you, the poetically literate readers, make up your own minds.
  1^st a brief bio of RM: he was born in an Oakland, California Salvation Army hospital in 1933. He never knew his father & at 11 left home to work his way across the US. His itinerance brought him work as a rodman, cowhand, lumberjack, ditch digger, railroad worker, rodeo cowboy, & soldier in Korea. He started out his literary career as a Beatnik poet who read with Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco in the 1950s, but soon tried his hand at acting. This dead-ended with him trying a hand at singing jazz with Lionel Hampton. He turned to scoring films in the late 1960s & snagged 2 Oscar nominations for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie & A Boy Named Charlie Brown. He also wrote classical music & was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize- not for poetry but for music. He even won a Grammy award in 1967 for his spoken word album Lonesome Cities. Say what you will about the man’s verse- & I’ll say plenty pro- & con-- but the man is not nearly the charlatan & fraud, artistically, that his legion of poetic detractors depict. Musicians as diverse & acclaimed as Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Chet Baker, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como, & Petula Clark have used RM songs to display their wares & gather accolades. He’s also a noted left wing hero (outside of poetry) who politically supported all the ‘right’ causes- against Vietnam, pro-civil, gay, adoptee, labor, & human rights.
  Now, LC: he was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1934. His father died when LC was 9. He went to college & led a country-western musical trio called the Buckskin Boys. He began writing poetry, & his 1^st book was published in 1956. This led to more books & a reputation as a poet that was higher than RM’s- but not much. LC moved to Greece in the 1960s & wrote more poetry & 2 novels: The Favorite Game, & Beautiful Losers. But novels were not enough- LC turned his poetry into songwriting. He headed for the USA & his songs were covered by a # of artists, including pop diva Judy Collins. In 1967 LC released his 1st album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen. Noted filmmaker Robert Altman scored his film McCabe and Mrs. Miller with LC music. The 1970s saw LC at his high mark musically. A string of acclaimed albums led to the Best of Leonard Cohen in 1975. But, as a musician LC never reached the heights in the USA that he did in Europe, or his homeland. Yet, as with RM, numerous ‘name’ singers have covered his songs: Neil Diamond, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, & Diana Ross. Also a noted champion of many liberal causes, LC has also produced poetry that is ridiculed- & with some just cause. But, as with RM it is- while not that good, not nearly as bad as detractors claim.
  Let us start off with some typical poems. 1^st RM:

Apartment 4E

The girl upstairs
is entertaining again,
I could set my clock
by the footfall on the stairs.

I see her sometimes,
coming and going on the stairs
or going to the market.

Sometimes I hear her late at night
playing sad music
or walking overhead.
She smiles in the daytime,
but not at me.

  This is not a good poem. But it is not a bad poem. With a little rework it might be a very good poem in the fashion of my fellow UPG colleague Bruce Ario. The title sets a scene. Stanza 1 sets it up nicely- we even get an inversion of the cliché of ‘setting a clock by’. The music is not too forced nor absent. Stanza 2 is prosaic & contains the near cliché of ‘coming and going’- although, in this instance it is not that egregious since it seems to be just a casual observation from an average lonely guy/(girl?). The 1^st 3 lines of stanza 3 are the worst in the poem- 2 clichés are present: ‘late at night’ is borderline, but given that it is followed by the ‘sad’ music, it is tipped into full cliché, because a cliché is not just a phrase or word or trope used too often, but used too often in the same ways & expected places. A quick way to heighten this poem would be to fuse those 3 lines with stanza 2. The association with the casual-speak of that stanza might rescue ‘late at night’ from cliché- but probably not. The last 2 lines, however, are excellent. While the stark contrast with the aforementioned night might seem predictable, the last line’s turn away from the wonderful image of smiling in the daytime really packs an emotional wallop. Is this a good poem? No. Just a so-so poem, & even with massive reworking this will never be a great poem- without losing its casual feel. But this poem is better than alot of the published poems on the same theme. Aside from the poem’s good enjambment this poem could be a Robert Creeley poem. Imagine it broken thusly:

Apartment 4E

The girl

upstairs

is entertaining

again, I cd set my

clock by the 

footfall on the stairs.  

I see her some-

times, coming and

going on the stairs

or going to the

market.

Sometimes I hear her late

at night playing sad

music or walking over-

head. She smiles in

the daytime, but

not at me.

How To Speak Poetry

  Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you to hover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly. Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.
  What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad sex. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.
  This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good whores. The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition. Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say panties. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.
  The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honor you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps and sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.
  Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.

  Forget WSM- this proem is so typical of the proems published by Academia that it could have been written by any of the 1000s of them. But, because they know LC wrote it, it therefore is just a feelgood ‘string of clichés’ & not a ‘sensitive probing of the human condition.’ Yes, it is bad writing, & wholly generic- but it is no worse than the reams of proems published in the last 30 years by ODs diverse as Robert Bly & Henry Rollins- & that is the point. Here’s another from LC:

Gift 

You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.

  Another bad poem. I can tell you it would not surprise me in the least if this had been  penned by a celebrity poetaster like Tennessee Williams or Leonard Nimoy, or even that Blue Mountain diva Susan Polis Schutz. Aha!, I know you’re thinking that this is a ‘smoking gun’ that qualitatively proves the difference between the SADs & ODs. Well, no. I could equally imagine the above garbage dripping from the pen of a Mark Strand. Is there that big a difference between LC’s tripe &, say, a Jane Kenyon’s? Here’s a JK piece of tripe- you decide:

Surprise

He suggests pancakes at the local diner,
followed by a walk in search of mayflowers,
while friends convene at the house
bearing casseroles and a cake, their cars
pulled close along the sandy shoulders
of the road, where tender ferns unfurl
in the ditches, and this year's budding leaves
push last year's spectral leaves from the tips
of the twigs of the ash trees. The gathering
itself is not what astounds her, but the casual
accomplishment with which he has lied.

  OK, I couldn’t resist. I know I said I was not gonna compare the SADs’ doggerel to the ODs’- but really, just look at this pair. Both poems are larded with cliché- both in wording & narrative. Despite the alliteration in JK’s poem it is very prosaic & dull- & as ‘precious’ as LC’s. Yet, JK was (according to Robert Bly) a ‘genius’, while LC is a hack songwriter. The really important point to know about an OD like JK is that the above poem is, in fact, 1 of her better & ‘deeper’ poems. Truly! Another poem from LC:

I Wonder How Many People In This City

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me,
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.

  Is this poem unique, or well written? No. I’ve seen versions of this type of ‘moment poem’ many times before- including the recapitulated title/1^st line. It is also a standard ‘filler’ poem: those poems that take up a whole page in a book because the ‘poet’ wants each poem to have ‘breathing room’ & ‘work with the page’s white space’. The point, again, is that this poem- while typical of LC’s oeuvre- is also typical of virtually all published poets writing today. Granted, a literal 3-4 handfuls go beyond this poem’s basic format- but the masses do not. In fact, the bulk of the masses- while being able to pen lines 1-6- are incapable of penning the neat little twist in lines 7-8. Does this make this a good poem? No. Does it rescue it from being bad? Possibly. Is it in league with the best I’ve ever written? Or Frost, Stevens, Emanuel, Plath, Jeffers, Crane, etc.? No. So? It’s still as good as the bulk of the masses, & better than alot of it. Let me end this section with 2 RM poems- this a bit longer than the 1^st. Let’s examine it, what follows, & then sum up.

Rehearsal For A Sonnet On Your Body 

Were I a priest I'd lay you open
like a rite and stretch you out across
church conversation. I would translate
every limb of you from my mother tongue
to Latin, Greek, Greek orthodox. I'd mouth
your arms as I would Sunday saints in sermon;
sword and three-pronged spear to frighten
newer converts and the little criminals.

                              My lips would linger
on your mouth in word only, but with such
words devout parishioner has yet to hear. My
tongue would curve and turn at talking of the
coil and curvature and kindness of your tongue.  

Were I a cardinal, a pope, a bishop used as pawn
I'd do you as a final prayer, then tucking you
beneath my arm be gone from church and
               catechism contradiction and the dawn.

2.

Comes now the taking of the wine and wafers.
                      Whose blood and body is it?
I leave the altar cowardly as week-old custard
crusty and with perspiration round my edges.
The choir goes crazy
                    chanting penance, penance.

If death is sentence
the memory of you lying gently in my head
would still be sentence pronounced but not
                                       said well enough.

  Obviously this is a love poem that uses the age-old religious metaphors to compare the act of sex with that of holiness. This has been done very well in the past: think Rilke or Donne. It has also been done terribly- by many a ‘name poet’. This poem has definite minuses, but- overall- its pluses outweigh them. The title is very effective & makes 1 want to read on. Plus it establishes a multiplicity of perspectives that the speaker’s voice can be interpreted from. Section 1 is very good- aside from a dangling the & and in stanzas 2 & 3, there’s very little to quibble with (exactly why RM & other poets are so schizophrenic in their enjambment abilities from poem to poem is a subject worthy of inquiry &/or essay!). This section is cliché-free, & only the last 2 lines could be phrased a little better. Section 2 is a bit weaker, especially stanza 1 with its clichés about the sacramental body. Stanza 2 twists the ‘death sentence’ motif from actual death to grammatical sentence nicely. The whole of section 2, however, feels out of place, thematically, with section 1. Yet, the uniqueness & skilled rescue of clichés in the poem’s 1^st ½ is more than enough to compensate for its petering out. & the poem’s last stanza is a nice bit of writing- it just adds nothing to this particular poem. Here is 1 of RM’s most well-known poems:

Moth 

Awakening

this morning

after the first night of being loved

I heard the disillusioned moth

flapping at the window glass

trying to reach the morning sunlight.

And the sun,

long fingers of it,

came through the window

picking out the dust in special corners.

In the pre-dawn hours

lying together

all arms and legs and breathing

with the rain not so far away

and morning coming too soon

I hoped to never see the sun again.

And now

your face and the sun

have made this room

with only ceiling sky

and avenues of sunlit dust

beautiful.In the.

  OK, it should be pretty obvious that this is the worst of the 3 RM poems we’ve looked at. It is also very typical of the bulk of the poems that spring to mind when the reading public thinks of RM. It is very Blue Mountain. The only real questions seemingly provoked are a) in the poem why is the moth disillusioned? This is the classic query, asked with depth, by those who have deigned to critique RM’s poems- & this the chestnut they critique. The answer is because it’s realized it cannot get through the glass. The other question is b) why is this 1 of RM’s most well-known poems? Again, the answer is obvious, because it is so banal & easy to understand. But, why have not critics looked at the 30-40% of RM’s verse that is equal to or better than 99% of Academic verse? 2 reasons pop up: 1) they have looked & don’t wanna eat crow. 2) RM has made it easy for them with his injudicious slapping together of book after book. I suspect that a good editor could put together a pretty solid-good collection of 60-100 pages of poetry cobbled together from RM’s dozens of individual books. & I can tell you- 60-100 pages of solid-good poetry is more than these well-known & praised poets have written in their lifetime: Janice Mirikitani, David St. John, Robert Creeley, Donald Hall, Bob Holman, Nikki Giovanni, etc. You get my point. Here’s another: RM has undoubtedly been his own worst editorial enemy! 
  He is a mediocre poet who has written tripe. But, he is aware of that fact. This is why he has never avidly pursued poetry alone. He knows his limits are stretched to the max with Rehearsal For A Sonnet On Your Body. This may be another reason for the scorn directed at RM, & to a lesser degree at LC. They know when ‘not to push’ the envelope, lest reveal the trickster is just an average Joe. Therefore it’s easy to deride their ‘laziness’- which is not true laziness in the Ginsberg/Ashbery mold- rather Self-Awareness of limits! That poets from Hall to Bly to Giovanni to Wanda Coleman are even lazier still, well….Add in the fact that RM (& LC) have been able to support themselves solely via their art & not had to prostitute themselves via Academia, well, again- y’know….Another oddity is why LC’s reputation as a poet (meager though it is) is generally considered above RM’s when, clearly, a side-by-side comparison will reveal that RM is definitely better with words, ideas, & narrative (poetically, if not in prose). Let’s take a brief look at how these 2 scorned SADs handle similar themes in similarly lengthed poems. Hey, I know I promised to end with the prior poems, but you cut me some slack when I slipped in JK’s poison, no?:

  In the 6 categories RM is better in a sweep. Yet, his poem is nothing to brag about. In short, I think LC’s rep has soared (hee-hee) slightly higher than RM’s for much the same reason that Academics ODs’ soar higher than both: perceived respectability. LC has had much ‘hipper’ supporters outside of poetry & his ‘serious’ pursuits as a novelist lend him the Academic thumbs-up RM lacks. Yet, clearly RM is superior- & may have worked himself up to passability poetically, had he focused on poetry alone. LC, well- let’s just say Jane Kenyon’s not the only 1 who could honestly claim she’s on top of Donald Hall!

The Detested Verse Of The Manifest: William McGonagall, Eugene Field, Joyce Kilmer, & Richard Brautigan

  I have tried to give each of these sub-sectioned essays appropriate titles. The other sections were easy to name- but to try to link these 4 poetasters was harder- then it struck! It was manifest that these were the doggerelists who stated the obvious- & in very simplistic (not simple) fashion. All of them are mocked & reviled to a degree- yet all 4 have served the last century or so well in their roles as punching bags. Yet, as with McKuen & Cohen, none are quite as bad as advertised- yet, all are pretty bad!
  Again, let me lead off with brief bios of this quartet- then pound into assailing & redeeming their shit. William McGonagall was born in Edinburgh, Scotland about 1825(?) & grew up in Dundee, where he followed his family into the weaving trade. His claim to literary fame rests on being ‘The World’s Worst Poet’- & many a tome has sought to embellish this myth. He is both ridiculed & admired for his poetic persistence in the face of talent’s absence. His sojourn, by hoof, for an audience with Queen Victoria (unsuccessful) is legendary in the annals of human failure & mockery: he got no further than the gate & was ordered to never return. WM was also- perhaps the world’s most gullible person- a source of numerous pranks designed to play on his overly high opinion of his doggerel. He’s been called ‘Dundee's best remembered nobody’, & ‘a man without talent who thought he was a great poet’. He was in his 40s when the Muse knocked him for a loop, & he died a pauper in 1902. But, despite writing some terrible verse- HE IS NOT THE WORLD’S WORST POET- not by a longshot; even if we mean only those whose works are widely known.
  Eugene Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850, & spent the bulk of his life as a journalist. Although the most widely-read poet of his time (for his children’s poems) he is almost a cipher today. His poems were regularly published in his Chicago Daily News column Sharps & Flats. He married his wife Julia in 1873 & fathered 8 kids- the source of inspiration for many of his poems. So well-known was he for his poems’ aims was EF that he was called ‘The Children’s Poet’- even though he is known to have written sexually explicit lyrics for men’s lodges. He died in 1895. He is a bad poet, no doubt- but the ridicule heaped upon his non-children’s verse is a tad excessive. The bin of obscurity is enough penance for EF- the gratuitous slings against him (although not to WM’s heights) have been excessive.
  Next on the list is the poet who authored probably the most singularly scorned English language poem of all time: Trees. If you groaned you know who I mean: the infamous Joyce Kilmer. This JK was actually born Alfred Joyce Kilmer in 1886, in New Brunswick, New Jersey & graduated from Columbia University in 1908. He later embarked on a journalism career with the New York Times, & in 1917 enlisted as a private in the 7th Regiment, New York National Guard. He transferred to the 165th Infantry, & was shipped to France where he spent many nights on patrol in no-man's land. He was shot to death at 31 years of age. JK was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for bravery. So well-known was JK, that Camp Kilmer in New Jersey is named for him. The dread Trees was published in 1914. While John Donne, George Herbert, & Gerard Manley Hopkins never had anything to fear, in those years JK was, astonishingly,  considered the top Roman Catholic poet in English. The poetry is bad, mawkish & has little going for it save 1 thing- there are far worse poets alive & spewing doggerel today!
  Finally, Richard Brautigan was born in 1935 in Tacoma, Washington. Not much is known of his early childhood but RB spread many tall tales of it- so many that the truth of that part of his life is as obscured as WM’s, except with RB this obfuscation was deliberately intended for use as a literary mythos machine. From 1955-1958 RB lived in San Francisco, & pal’d around with the Beatnik crowd. In 1959 his 1^st book was published: Lay the Marble Tea. By the end of the 60s RB was a best-selling poet, with an attendant scorn not too dissimilar to that lobbed at best-selling poets RM & LC. Other works such as Trout Fishing in America, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, & In Watermelon Sugar date from that time. During the 1970s RB became a recluse & refused public invitations. His work slipped into obscurity as quickly as it rose. Sometime in late 1984 RB shot himself with a .44 caliber pistol- so removed from life was RB that his body was discovered only weeks later- on 10/25/84. Alcoholic depression had caught up with the poetaster well-known for his humor. Despite critical pummeling, a good deal of which was deserved, RB was probably the best ‘pure poet’ of the lot of poetasters mentioned in this essay- with the exception of the more formally bound, & later-mentioned, John G. Neihardt.
  Now, on to purifying the dreck! The 1^st on our list is the dread William McGonagall. Let’s survey some of his crap & point out some redeeming features. Here’s a well-known piece of dung:

Loch Leven

Beautiful Loch Leven, near by Kinross
For a good day's fishing the angler is seldom at a loss,
For the Loch it abounds with pike and trout,
Which can be had for the catching without any doubt;
And the scenery around it is most beautiful to be seen,
Especially the Castle, wherein was imprisoned Scotland's ill-starred Queen.

Then there's the lofty Lomond Hills on the Eastern side,
And the loch is long, very deep, and wide;
Then on the Southern side there's Benarty's rugged hills,
And from the tops can be seen the village of Kinross with its spinning mills.

The big house of Kinross is very handsome to be seen,
With its beautiful grounds around it, and the lime trees so green
And 'tis a magnificent sight to see, on a fine summer afternoon,
The bees extracting honey from the leaves when in full bloom.

There the tourist can enjoy himself and while away the hours,
Underneath the lime trees shady bowers,
And listen to the humming of the busy bees,
While they are busy gathering honey from the lime trees.

Then there's the old burying ground near by Kinross,
And the dead that lie there turned into dusty dross,
And the gravestones are all in a state of decay,
And the old wall around it is mouldering away.

  Most of what critics have said about this poem, & WM’s work in general, is absolutely true: larded with cliché, poor music, no rhyme nor reason to the line lengths, mawkish, etc. So you ask, If they’re all right with all their criticisms then why are they wrong? Good question. They are absolutely right insofar as what they say about the poem- it’s what they neglect to say about WM’s poetry that holds the key to why his poetry is not so bad. Recall some of the poetasters of the last few decades I mentioned earlier? Add to that lot Academes such as Michael Dennis Browne, David Citino, Sandra Cisneros, or any Nuyorican or Languagist Poet. Now, what I just said about WM’s poem applies equally well to virtually everything these folks have published- i.e.: larded with cliché, poor music, no rhyme nor reason to the line lengths, mawkish, etc. But, they lack some of the positives that WM has: that is- a good sense of humor (however unintended a critic must deal with what’s there, not a ‘supposed’ provenance- & WM is a slapsticker’s dream!), some true Absurdism, some nice music scattered amongst the clangor, & occasional real emotional depth. Let’s go 1-by-1 in this poem: it is very funny to not just state the obvious, but state it over & over in the exact same mawkish way. Note the times he does it: c’mon, it’s like waiting for the baboom to drop! This heightens the Absurd aspect of this speaker & his ‘deep’ observations. Many of WM’s poetic characters inhabit the same universe as Samuel Beckett’s theatrical characters. But, SB intended his work to be deep & funny at the same time- whether or not it succeeded it is that patina which clouds all SB criticism, & the lack of it which does the same to all WM criticism- NOT THE ACTUAL WORK. Am I saying SB & WM are literary equals?- NO! But the best of WM & the worst (even mid-level stuff) of SB most certainly are! Divorced from the wickedry of intent a more fair & judicious assessment of art can be constructed. & there is some nice music in this & other WM poems- usually it will last a line or so & then gnash terribly- but that does not diminish the mellifluity that is there. This is an aspect much poetry- free or formal- of the past few decades is utterly void of. How much ‘poetry’ really is prose cut into lines- lacking aural, & metaphoric or imagistic, music as well? But, ‘The big house of Kinross is very handsome to be seen,/With its beautiful grounds around it, and the lime trees so green’, is very musical; what surrounds it- we- ell, it’s crap- but not the crux of my point! Now, look at the last 2 lines of this poem- especially the last 1. There is genuine emotion there- despite the clunkiness of most of what precedes it, this poem has real emotion. WM is not just shining us on. Is this, in of itself, a point worth praising? To me- no. BUT, the point is that WM has been criticized for lacking ‘real’ or ‘deep’ emotion by the terrible critics who have wielded ‘emotion’ as an end-all & be-all for art! My point is this is palpably false- generally & applied to WM. Here’s another of his clichéfests:

The Moon 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou seemest most charming to my sight;
As I gaze upon thee in the sky so high,
A tear of joy does moisten mine eye.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the Esquimau in the night;
For thou lettest him see to harpoon the fish,
And with them he makes a dainty dish.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the fox in the night,
And lettest him see to steal the grey goose away
Out of the farm-yard from a stack of hay.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the farmer in the night,
and makes his heart beat high with delight
As he views his crops by the light in the night.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the eagle in the night,
And lettest him see to devour his prey
And carry it to his nest away.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the mariner in the night
As he paces the deck alone,
Thinking of his dear friends at home.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the weary traveller in the night;
For thou lightest up the wayside around
To him when he is homeward bound.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the lovers in the night
As they walk through the shady groves alone,
Making love to each other before they go home.

  OK, this poem exemplifies my 3 earlier points even better than Loch Leven. It does not have the genuine feeling- at least to me, but that’s debatable. But, this poem is an absolute RIOT! It is so over-the-top that it approaches almost brilliant levels of unwitting self-deprecation. Taken seriously the flaws are enough to fill a Russian novel’s length of grievances. But, why take it seriously?- FUCK WM’s intent! Take the poem as it is. This poet, & poem, might be the poetic equivalent of noted filmic schlockmeister Ed Wood, & his classic crapfest Plan 9 From Outer Space. I can even imagine a Tor Johnson-like character trying to emote his way through this. Just look at the horrible faux Middle English & assorted horrible –ests. Note the insistent repetitions of the manifest- stupor reigns, a reader must give in to it & accept that this is brilliant crap: to go SO FAR over the bounds of schlockery. Would that modern poetasters could take themselves so seriously that they veer into satire like this. Virtually every narrative cliché re: old Luna is recycled here. There is no shame! & the better portion of it IS VERY MUSICAL!  I can easily imagine a soliloquy of this poem spoken by Chuck Jones’s Bugs Bunny. This is a bad poem- but it is SO BAD that it is a GOOD type of badness. Pore through recent anthologies of verse- especially the dreadful Best In American Poetry annuals & I guarantee you 4 out of every 5 poems published there will be decidedly worse than this poem. None- especially poems by ‘supposed’ humorists- will hurt your gut like this! My only condemnation of this poem is that it lacks a Hie or a Prithee. But, other than that this poem truly is a WM POETIC GEM!
  Let us end WM’s section with a snippet from his most famous (read- infamous) poem: The Tay Bridge Disaster. No doubt, if you’ve gone to a poetry workshop or class on poetry history, you’ve been told how bad this poem is in many a book, essay, or ignorant comment. Again, it is bad, but- oh, Hell- you deserve a belly laugh: here’s the whole damned poem:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time. 

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clods seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

  Admit it, you were rolling. But look at that last couplet- Aesop would be proud. I will not recap my prior points, for they all apply (in spades) to this poem. Let me end my defense of WM by saying that part of the reason he, & other bad poets are ripped, is because their writing is so guileless. This is perceived as a lack of education- & points to a classism that still infects Academia to this day. In truth, few poets who are not ‘sanctioned’ avoid this dunning. Someone like a Robert Burns- who wrote alot of poems that rival or surpass typical WM clangor- avoids this tar by writing his crap in dialect. Granted, he had alot of good poems- mostly song lyrics, though. But his overblown rep as a great poet has more to do with his being held up as a National Poet- the very thing poor WM aspired to (in the same country no less- Scotland!). You object? You say I desecrate a legend? Here’s Burns’s A Vision:

As I stood by yon roofless tower,
Where the wa'flower scents the dewy air,
Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower,
And tells the midnight moon her care.

The stream, adown its hazelly path,
Was rushing by the ruin'd wa's,
Hasting to join the sweeping Nith,
Whase distant roaring swells and fa's. 

The cauld blae North was streaming forth
Her lights, wi' hissing, eerie din;
Athwart the lift they start and shift,
Like Fortune's favors, tint as win. 

By heedless chance I turn'd mine eyes,
And, by the moonbeam, shook to see
A stern and stalwart ghaist arise,
Attir'd as Minstrels wont to be. 

Had I a statue been o' stane,
His daring look had daunted me;
And on his bonnet grav'd was plain,
The sacred posy-"Libertie!" 

And frae his harp sic strains did flow,
Might rous'd the slumb'ring Dead to hear;
But oh, it was a tale of woe,
As ever met a Briton's ear! 

He sang wi' joy his former day,
He, weeping, wailed his latter times;
But what he said-it was nae play,
I winna venture't in my rhymes. 

  Sorry, Burnsians, this is a very bad poem- right there with WM’s worst. Is the overall music better?- YES. But its cliché rate equals WM’s- right from the very title. What equalizes it downward to a typical WM poem, though, is that it is void of real humor- in fact, humor is the single biggest + RB has going for most of his better poems. But critics gush over this crap merely because they fetishize the dialect/lingual aspect of the poem- if you translate what it means, though, there is no hidden depth & your odyssey for meaning turns into a wild goose chase. This poem, while in league with WM’s typical crap, is not as good as WM’s The Moon- despite the difference in seriousness. WM’s poem fulfills more qualities of what 1 looks for in good art than this 1 does. Remove the names & reps & I guarantee more people will enjoy WM’s poem while shrugging their shoulders at this. Here’s this RB’s most famous poem- hey, I already apologized for breaking my word with comparing SADs with ODs!:

A Red, Red Rose 

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run. 

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

  Now, I know the Gertrude Stein argument is forthcoming- DROP IT RIGHT THERE! This is a very bad poem- it may well be the most famous bad poem, by a universally acclaimed poet, ever published. Heed this- I TRUST YOUR JUDGMENT ENOUGH TO NOT POINT OUT THE OBVIOUS FLAWS in this vastly overrated poem. Enough of the damnable Scotch! Let’s leap the pond back to my home country.
  I am tempted to call Eugene Field ‘the Donald Hall of the turn of the last century’- but, 2 things prevent that. 1) DH came after EF chronologically so I would be forced to invert that injunction. 2) EF is better than DH, & I am a man of honor. I do not besmirch a man more than he deserves. Here’s the start of EF’s Children’s Poem The Sugar Plum Tree:

Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?
   'T is a marvel of great renown!
It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop sea
   In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;
The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet
   (As those who have tasted it say)
That good little children have only to eat
   Of that fruit to be happy next day.

The Wanderer

Upon a mountain height, far from the sea,
         I found a shell,
And to my listening ear the lonely thing
Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing,
         Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell.

How came the shell upon that mountain height?
         Ah, who can say
Whether there dropped by some too careless hand,
Or whether there cast when Ocean swept the Land,
         Ere the Eternal had ordained the Day?

Strange, was it not? Far from its native deep,
         One song it sang,---
Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,
Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide,---
         Ever with echoes of the ocean rang.

And as the shell upon the mountain height
         Sings of the sea,
So do I ever, leagues and leagues away,---
So do I ever, wandering where I may,---
          Sing, O my home! Sing, O my home! of thee.  

  This is as wretched as anything WM or any other doggerelist wrought. From the clichés to the melodramatic poetic O’s & back to its title, this poem offers little. But remove the archaistic phrasings, & the form, & this poem is not much different from many a contemporary vers libre musing on household objects, or relationships, or even a self-same stroll on a beach. Read some of Robert Bly’s sententious proems- or worse, W.S. Merwin’s. Here’s some more tripe, this for his mother:

To Mary Field French

A dying mother gave to you
   Her child a many years ago;
How in your gracious love he grew,
   You know, dear, patient heart, you know.

The mother's child you fostered then
   Salutes you now and bids you take
These little children of his pen
   And love them for the author's sake.

To you I dedicate this book,
   And, as you read it line by line,
Upon its faults as kindly look
   As you have always looked on mine.

Tardy the offering is and weak;---
   Yet were I happy if I knew
These children had the power to speak
   My love and gratitude to you.

  This is very ‘out there’, no doubt. Little can be said in defense of this poem. I know, you’re waiting for the BUT! Except (see, I fooled ya!) that there is fundamentally no difference between this poem & the 1000s of poems published annually (by both Academics & ‘Outsiders’) which equally wear their emotions for all to see, & equally display little skill- be they poems on loved 1s or the poet’s opinions on something. This poem trumps those contemporary disasters for really 1 reason- it has a little bit of genuine music. Let me end EF’s run with 1 of his better poems:

Chicago Weather 

To-day, fair Thisbe, winsome girl!
   Strays o'er the meads where daisies blow,
Or, ling'ring where the brooklets purl,
   Laves in the cool, refreshing flow.

To-morrow, Thisbe, with a host
   Of amorous suitors in her train,
Comes like a goddess forth to coast
   Or skate upon the frozen main.

To-day, sweet posies mark her track,
   While birds sing gayly in the trees;
To-morrow morn, her sealskin sack
   Defies the piping polar breeze.

So Doris is to-day enthused
   By Thisbe's soft, responsive sighs,
And on the morrow is confused
   By Thisbe's cold, repellent eyes. 

  Objectively, this is a very mediocre poem- at best. But if 1 knows the lore of Pyramus & Thisbe from Greek mythos it takes on a bit deeper meaning- & is not just the case of a poet ‘name-dropping’ to spice up a poem with implied meaning. P&T were Romeo & Juliet even before Orpheus & Eurydice were. He (P) was a swain taken with her (T’s) Babylonian sex appeal. Their parents opposed their love & bitterly resented the other family. Their homes were attached, meaning T was the original ‘girl next door’. The 2 young’uns decided to sneak out 1 night & do the nasty. T got there 1^st but saw a lion with blood on its lips from killing another animal. She tore ass but dropped her cloak. The lion grabbed it in his jaws. P ambled by a few minutes later & assumed T had been eaten. As all melodramatic teenagers in mythos seem wont, T took his sword & did the old hari-kiri. Of course, T never made it home (like a good & intelligent girl would), & for some reason turned back. Of course, by that time the lion was chowing down on old P’s carcass. T picked up P’s sword & decided to follow in his impulsively moronic footsteps. The lion, needless to say, had a feast that night. The next day P & T’s parents found the kids’ remains. A mulberry tree’s fruit, which had fallen where the lion had snacked, was dyed red with P & T’s blood. Ever after the fruit of mulberry trees was the color of blood (ooh, scary). OK- now, reread the poem. Is the poem on necrophilia? Lesbianism? Lesbian necrophilia? Is it all in Doris’s head? Has Doris seen a ghost? & what has all this to do with the title? The 1^st 3 stanzas foreshadow death: lingering in/by a river is often a synbol of a life passed, stanza 2 already makes Thisbe a seeming mythic figure, flowers, birds singing, then time skews over the last 6 lines, & we are ended by a very disturbing turn away from the usual EF sweet crap. A great poem? No. But a pretty good 1 & a lot better than the vast bulk of poems on a loved 1. The fact that it provokes all the questions it does is a testament to its worth over the snooze-inducing lot of cotemporary poetastry. In truth, this is not the best selection of EF’s to show he’s better than the lot assigned him. But I wanted to include some full poems especially to contrast EF’s typical stuff with what he occasionally achieved in poems like Chicago Weather. Unfortunately, most of EF’s better poems drone on for pages- at least in my meaning those poems with positive qualities swamped by a sea of crap!
  Now let me take on the tarbaby known as Joyce Kilmer- I know, even the name draws snickers from those in the ‘supposed’ know. Y’know it’s coming, so let’s get the obvious choice done with right off the bat. Here it is, in all its horror: 

Trees

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Poets 

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
 That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
 Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.

Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
 Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
 They only sing who are struck dumb by God. 

  Again: Fear Not, John Donne! Clichés abound & there’s not much to recommend it but its nice gonging–like thump. How’s about this 1?:

Wealth

(For Aline)

From what old ballad, or from what rich frame
 Did you descend to glorify the earth?
Was it from Chaucer's singing book you came?
 Or did Watteau's small brushes give you birth?

Nothing so exquisite as that slight hand
 Could Raphael or Leonardo trace.
Nor could the poets know in Fairyland
 The changing wonder of your lyric face.

I would possess a host of lovely things,
 But I am poor and such joys may not be.
So God who lifts the poor and humbles kings
 Sent loveliness itself to dwell with me. 

  OK. I can pretty much ditto the sentiments I echoed just above. Some more?:

The Moods 

Time drops in decay,
Like a candle burnt out,
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
What one in the rout
Of the fire-born moods
Has fallen away?       

  Need I go on? Yes. Here’s a final piece of dreck:

Into The Twilight

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.