Bad Poetry Friday Begins
In the children’s literary blogosphere there is a regular running series called Poetry Friday. Many bloggers come together posting poems and reviews of poetry books for general consumption. Well, April happens to be Poetry Month and that can only mean one thing. Time to turn everything topsy-turvy on its head!
When Lynn Hazen interviewed M.T. Anderson back in the day and received from him a truly terrible poem that could mean only one thing. Bad Poetry Friday has begun. To celebrate I have gone to the source of the best bad poems I know of. Yes. I have located a journal from my high school years where I attempted, on a regular basis, to write poetry. Bad poetry. Terrible poetry. Awful, amazingly self-indulgent poetry.
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So for the regular Bad Poetry Friday round-up, head on over to The Imaginary Blog. And now? One of my many bad poems (though thankfully not one of the why-doesn’t-he-like-me? ones):
Untitled
Back in 1492
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
And 92 was once for us
The year we rode that great old bus
Of dusty metal, brown and old
That smelt of rotting gum with mold
Here is what I love about this poem of mine. First off, it clearly was never finished. I got that far and then I can only assume that my attention wandered (someone probably had a rerun of an old Dukes of Hazzard on TV or something). Second, about 25% of the poem wasn’t even written by me. And third, gum does not mold. Nor does it rot.
Love it! Got bad poems of your own? Well stay tuned. There are a lot more where this came from. Them high school journals of mine be gold. GOLD, I tells ye!
Thanks to Lynn Hazen for the idea.
Filed under: Uncategorized
About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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Ah… high school. When I was a snickering adolescent boy, we studied a type of poem (I forget what it is called) that had a specific structure and was supposed to make sarcastic fun of a famous person. Here was mine:
Catherine the Great
Had a horse for a mate
But now she is dead
How sad for Mr. Ed
The most embarrassing thing is that I remembered this masterpiece without digging out any old notebooks or yearbooks. So I must remain…
Anon
A pity. Of course now we can speculate as to who you are. I’m gonna go with . . . gosh, who’s the cutest fuzziest picture book creator out there? I guess I’ll have to guess that you’re Steven Kellogg.