Ah, memories!
I was reading bladed_crescent's latest entry, and it got me to thinking of my late step-father. Winn was a writer and a poet, and as with many such, some of his work was really wonderful, but some of it stank. Like three-day-old crab shells left in the garbage. Many of his friends were also poets. Most of them self-published their works in "chapbooks," which are usually digest-sized (about 5-1/2 by 4-1/4 inches), stapled booklets.
For the most part, these poems were beyond atrocious. The poets often preferred to use free verse, which often has no rhyme or structure. I don't mind free verse, to some extent, but staggering random words and phrases across a page in an "artistic" arrangement does not a "poem" make. (At least IMHO.)
I recall one called The Handless Clock. It contained a wretched, three-part horror that, in the third part, compared love to an ill-tempered dog, lying in wait on the front steps of a house. I think it went something like:
So, you have tamed the beast
Well...
See how it growls and barks...
Or something like that. It'd be almost impossible for me to recreate it without the original in front of me. I think one almost has be insane, on bad drugs, a worshipper of the Great Old Ones or just incredibly self-absorbed to write like that. (If there is any justice in the universe, no copies of the original work survive.)
My step-brother and I used to spend many, happy hours, making cruel sport of the bad poetry. We had our own volume, which we called Poetia. James was and is still gifted with an incredible ability to parodise and satirise, and while I contributed somewhat, most of the blame credit goes to him.
What little I can remember is beneath a cut, due to "nawty language" and sheer awfulness.
Here's the first fragment:
Dirtstag,
Rutting in the swinish, piss-stained mire of my soul.
Grunting.
Heaving.
Thrashing.
E X C R E M E N T!!!!!!!!!
Yellow sweat-cats infest my brow.
Rough words fly from my lips
Like turds from an infirm dog...
There was something else, about all being gone, "in the wink of a skink."
There was the phrase about "moldy purple uranium foil," and the one about a "black cat in white coal mine with one eye missing," or something like that.
Ah, good times, good times.
ETA: Gah! Can't sleep - typos will get me!
For the most part, these poems were beyond atrocious. The poets often preferred to use free verse, which often has no rhyme or structure. I don't mind free verse, to some extent, but staggering random words and phrases across a page in an "artistic" arrangement does not a "poem" make. (At least IMHO.)
I recall one called The Handless Clock. It contained a wretched, three-part horror that, in the third part, compared love to an ill-tempered dog, lying in wait on the front steps of a house. I think it went something like:
So, you have tamed the beast
Well...
See how it growls and barks...
Or something like that. It'd be almost impossible for me to recreate it without the original in front of me. I think one almost has be insane, on bad drugs, a worshipper of the Great Old Ones or just incredibly self-absorbed to write like that. (If there is any justice in the universe, no copies of the original work survive.)
My step-brother and I used to spend many, happy hours, making cruel sport of the bad poetry. We had our own volume, which we called Poetia. James was and is still gifted with an incredible ability to parodise and satirise, and while I contributed somewhat, most of the blame credit goes to him.
What little I can remember is beneath a cut, due to "nawty language" and sheer awfulness.
Here's the first fragment:
Dirtstag,
Rutting in the swinish, piss-stained mire of my soul.
Grunting.
Heaving.
Thrashing.
E X C R E M E N T!!!!!!!!!
Yellow sweat-cats infest my brow.
Rough words fly from my lips
Like turds from an infirm dog...
There was something else, about all being gone, "in the wink of a skink."
There was the phrase about "moldy purple uranium foil," and the one about a "black cat in white coal mine with one eye missing," or something like that.
Ah, good times, good times.
ETA: Gah! Can't sleep - typos will get me!