Saturday Suck: Bad to Worse

Man, this is an unexpected bonanza: a good poet inspires a bad poet, the bad poet writes some terrible doggerel, said terribly poetry incites the Internet to some even worse writing (but excellent character assassination)!


The trouble starts with George Gordon, Lord Byron. Yes, that Little Poet Fontleroy had his foibles: anyone who rhymes "intellectual" with "henpecked-you-all" has got to open themselves up for some ribbing. 


But nobody deserves the kind of treatment he receives at the hands of one J. Gordon Coogler.

Byron

J. Gordon Coogler

Oh, thou immortal bard!
Men may condemn the song
That issued from thy heart sublime,
Yet alas! Its music sweet
Has left an echo that will sound
Thro’ the lone corridors of Time.


Thou immortal Byron!
Thy inspired genius
Let no man attempt to smother –
May all that was good within thee
Be attributed to Heaven,
All that was evil – to thy mother.




I love the ineptness of it all, and especially the puzzlingly contemptuous ending wherein all Byron's faults are laid at his mothers' feet.


But the killing blow comes from Naomie Christensen: you MUST read this post from her Poetry Breakdown blog. Some highlights:





Lord Byron is known for using his status to be sexually overt and a criminal... ["Who is that sexually overt criminal?!" "Oh, that's just Lord Byron, a man of status, keep going about your business." "Oh, I see, very well then."] 


Lord Byron was an accomplished man and he wrote many stories with uncomfortable topics that exploited women... [His topics exploited women? How dashed uncomfortable of them!] 


It is also rumored he murdered people and was a pedophile. [Any man who would allow himself to become a victim of rumors must be disreputable.]


Coogler seems to believe that carnal knowledge and expressing it is good. This guy is way too overjoyed by sexual impurity. [Man, we either need to bring in some JoBro-style purity bracelets or one of those Cullen kids, things are just getting way too impure up in this bidness.]


This poem lacks grammar and a definite interpretation. [As does that sentence: grammar is an agreed-upon set of rules governing the use of language. There's no inherent quantity of grammar that can be increased.]




But without a doubt the best part of the post is the following:




There too many grammatical errors and while poetic license is a worthwhile excuse, I believe he wrote it and it was published.




Wow, just overall fantastic. Ignoring grammatical rules (and a logical conclusion to the sentence) whilst wagging a finger at a poem's syntactical errors.


Plus so much sex, repression and recrimination flying around, it's really a wonder nobody's gotten pregnant and shotgun-married yet. Let's leave it at that, before things get any more Twilight-y in here.