Dull thoughts on a shiny, shiny world.
Published on May 5, 2008 By cactoblasta In Poetry

I hate poetry.  I always have.

It is uniformly horrible, like a song without a tune, just words without meaning and emotional fervour without a story to give it purpose.

Poetry is the lowest form of prose. With it, any moron thinks they can pen something truly remarkable. They think that it makes them clever, or witty, or a tragic and sensitive soul who needs a hug, a punch or a lover - all three if you're paying.

They're wrong. While I admit some poetry is less awful than others, there are few things worse than when an ordinarily sane human being abandons perfectly good prose for rhyming or (worse) obscure punctuation.

It's AS iF

They think

it's cool

TO THROW  their sentences

all over

the place,

and insert random 'power words' (mother),

and that that (death in an armchair) somehow

makes them profound and (hanging by his left knee) wise.

They're (she watched, a tear fell) wrong.

They're horrible (jesus smiles) people and they're full of hate.

 

But enough about pretentious poets. Let's turn to the garden variety rhymer.

We all know one - an individual who, due to lack of any redeeming qualities, decides to be perverse and start speaking in rhyming couplets. Simple, ordinary words, that were they used in a sentence would be perfectly serviceable and not at all objectionable. But words, when mutilated by the laws of rhyme and violated by the foul desires of their profane host, that turn into something so horrible it hurts deep inside, a black and midnight horror twisted by loathsome means into an assault on the very humanity of the reader.

Such poetry is a crime against the soul and objectionable in every way imaginable.

I urge all of my loyal readers and writers to speak out against the injustice of poetry. Take a stand for the English language against the dark forces of the grammatically insane and the bore. Show those filthy, plague-ridden bad poets what it means to really have something to iambic pentameter about.


Comments (Page 1)
2 Pages1 2 
on May 05, 2008
While I actually do write poetry occasionally, I can honestly say:

DEATH TO THE POOR POETS.

Yeah, babeh, that's right - DEATH. Guillotines come cheap these days.

¡Viva la revolución contra la poesía fea!
on May 05, 2008
Execution is too good for them. Dangle them over the spike pit, with their only means of escape being to eat their own words, with the words made out of colourfully poisonous diuretics so that as they die in agony they're wracked with brutal spasms from the pain they inflict on decent, right-thinking individuals.
Then by a miracle of Science bring them back from the brink, nurse them to health and do it all over again.
on May 05, 2008
And have you ever noticed that it's usually high-school and college-aged kids that see fit to inflict such poetic abortions upon the general populace? What is it about the late teens and early twenties that makes people write such shit?
on May 05, 2008

SanChonino


And have you ever noticed that it's usually high-school and college-aged kids that see fit to inflict such poetic abortions upon the general populace? What is it about the late teens and early twenties that makes people write such shit?

Angst, baby!  Pure angst.  I was just going through some papers I kept from years ago.  I guess culling stuff I would like to keep scrapbooking style and I found some old poetry.  Full of angst! Oh, the woe!

I cringed and started laughing my ass off.  If you hold on to it, that kind of stuff can be really embarassingly funny.  And, no.  I won't be posting that.  Some humiliations are better enjoyed in private.

Slam bad, angsty poetry if you must, but Dr. Seuss was fairly poetic in a fun way.

on May 05, 2008
What is it about the late teens and early twenties that makes people write such shit?


I don't know...I tend to think my shit's fairly passable. Unless I've been sucking this whole time... (

I do, however, find that the certain blogger flinging words about with such random idiocy is offending my poetic soul. It's actually painful to read...gah!

A poem should flow, engage, touch one's very soul
And yet we have to see a bunch of shit slung by a random troll?

~Zoo
on May 05, 2008
He's a poet and don't know it but his feet show it 'cause they're Longfellows...
on May 05, 2008
Most people suck at poetry. And generally those who suck the most, don't realize it. And a rhyme here and there does not make incoherent cutesy rambling into a poem.
on May 05, 2008
And have you ever noticed that it's usually high-school and college-aged kids that see fit to inflict such poetic abortions upon the general populace? What is it about the late teens and early twenties that makes people write such shit?


It's an age of experimentation, so you can't blame them entirely for their stupidity. That's why it's okay to laugh at goth poetry rather than decapitate - you know it's just a phase, etc it'll be over soon etc.

Most people suck at poetry. And generally those who suck the most, don't realize it. And a rhyme here and there does not make incoherent cutesy rambling into a poem.


It definitely makes it something.

There once was a man from Nantucket...


I want to know how it ends!

Cacto, remind me to NEVER piss you off. /shudder


It's only fair and equal treatment. I just have to convince the people of this world of its justice.
on May 06, 2008
I agree. I hate Poetry, but I do like some poetry.

- Moskowitz the Self-Taught
on May 13, 2008
This Be The Verse (by Philip Larkin)


Larkin was one of a kind.

The question lies in (and the question you should be asking yourself, erathoniel) - how does one 'get out as early as (one) can'?

on May 13, 2008
Win.
on May 13, 2008
By dying, of course.


Well, thanks for ruining the fun guessing game of why Larkin was telling everyone to commit suicide.
on May 13, 2008
Ugh. He rhymes. I hate rhyming poetry above all. Why does it have to rhyme? Why make something serious and, frankly, bloody bleak, rhyme?

Let's prosify these lines and look at what he's really saying, shall we?

This Be The Verse (an essay in futility by Philip Larkin)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn by fools in old-style hats and coats, who half the time were soppy-stern and half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can and don't have any kids yourself.


Hmmmmmmmmm, it makes you think, dunnit.

Or it doesn't, because he's not saying anything that wasn't said better by, say, nearly anyone, including the arcane wisdom of the schoolhouse - 'life's a bitch and then you die' is a pithy little number that sums it up without needing to case aspersions on one's glorious ancestors.

This parent-hating unit, this man who says 'soppy-stern' as if it makes a lick of sense, has decreed that people hand on their misery to their descendants, as if in some way life was better in the 14th century and wildly more fantastic in the fourth.

If it wasn't poetry people would look at him like he was some pathetic little emo who didn't understand the meanings of words like 'fun', 'a good time' and 'making sense'. But just because it's poetry he can be 'misunderstood' and 'deeply profound'. I hate him and all his works.
on May 13, 2008
By the way, keep the recommendations of suicide to a minimum, please. I tend towards the laissez faire school of good threadkeeping, but I don't think anyone gains through suicidal dreams. Sexy dreams, yes, but suicidal dreams, no. I would never wish death on someone I disliked, because then I wouldn't be able to dislike them as much. And the loss of an opportunity to indulge in mindless vendetta is much worse than the convenience of a missing foil.
on May 14, 2008

Oh, fuck, well dangle me above the pit, let the shit run into my mouth but you won't stop me, I tells ya, you won't...

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