My new nonfiction title, New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You, is a good read for a society in lockdown. And since my mail is being delivered again, and a friend has reported receiving a copy in the mail, it seems likely that anyone wanting a print copy can hope to get it without too much delay.
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Five Worst Poems
in the English Language
This is a purely personal choice. I have excluded minor poets, even though one in particular, otherwise obscure, is promoted online as the very worst poet in the language. No, I am considering only famous poets, names known to anyone seriously interested in English-language literature. I am also disregarding the online rants of those who in college were force-fed poetry and have yet to get over it; I want to maintain a degree of objectivity. So here they are: my choice of the five worst poems in the English language.
No. 1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha.
An 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter based on Native American legends, It tells the story of the warrior Hiawatha and his love for the maiden Minnehaha. Though criticized from the start by critics, the poem was — for quite a while — popular with the public, for in those days educated people actually did read poetry, and long poems at that.
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| This 1910 illustration suggests mystery, adventure, something almost cosmic. But then one encounters the poem. |
So what’s my gripe? Everything.
- The length: impossible. It takes the average reader over two hours to read it, though few would even attempt it today.
- The meter. Longfellow was innovative in his choice of meters, but this one, trochaic tetrameter, strikes me as obsessively repetitious — la dee da da, la dee da da — and, finally, just plain ludicrous.
- The names: “Hiawatha” is okay, but “Minnehaha” invites ha ha, and as for “Gitche Gumee,” it attains the peak of the ridiculous.
To make my point, I need only cite the opening lines:
By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest, rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them; bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water, beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
Would you really want to spend over two hours with this stuff? Neither would I. Case closed.
No. 2. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Sir Galahad.”
Nineteenth-century poets embraced the Arthurian legend with enthusiasm, sometimes hugged it to death. Tennyson, an excellent poet in many ways, in this poem strains our credibility today. The opening lines:
My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
Pure? Hmm. Not that he’s indifferent to the ladies, far from it. But:
How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favours fall!
For them I battle till the end,
To save from shame and thrall:
But all my heart is drawn above,
My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine:
I never felt the kiss of lov
Nor maiden's hand in mine.
More bounteous aspects on me beam,
Me mightier transports move and thrill;
So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
A virgin heart in work and will.
A virgin knight? Okay, but for me that means a bore, a cipher, and a creep. Granted, the Arthurian legends had to come up with someone other than Lancelot, the greatest of knightly heroes, since the Big L had done naughty things with Arthur’s Guinevere. But to afflict us with Galahad, the purest biped ever known, and not the least bit conflicted, is going it a bit. Our post-Freudian mindset just can’t take it. No wonder my college prof teaching Victorian lit told us he didn’t have the heart — or was it the courage? — to assign the poem to us. Case closed.
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| W.E.F. Britten, illustration for Tennyson's poem. |
No. 3. William Wordsworth’s “To the Spade of a Friend (an Agriculturist).”
Never heard of it? Neither had I, till I found it online. Of all the Romantics, I rate Wordsworth — the earlier, pre-Laureate Wordsworth — the highest. But even the best poets have moments of insipid inspiration, as witnessed here. The poem, Wordsworth adds beneath the title, was “composed while we were labouring together in his pleasure-ground.” He then begins:
SPADE! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands,
And shaped these pleasant walks by Emont's side,
Thou art a tool of honour in my hands;
I press thee, through the yielding soil, with pride.
He goes on to praise his friend, the spade’s owner, but can’t let go of the spade.
Who shall inherit Thee when death has laid
Low in the darksome cell thine own dear lord?
That man will have a trophy, humble Spade!
A trophy nobler than a conqueror's sword.
His fetish continues in the last stanza, with mention of the spade’s new owner.
His thrift thy uselessness will never scorn;
An 'heir-loom' in his cottage wilt thou be:--
High will he hang thee up, well pleased to adorn
His rustic chimney with the last of Thee!
I’ve read of heroes’ swords and armor, and poets’ harps and lyres, being hung up in honor, but never a spade. Wordsworth did often embrace the ordinary and humble, thus avoiding the exoticism of so many nineteenth-century bards, but for me, this is taking it into the realm of the ludicrous. Frankly, it’s just plain silly. Case closed.
No. 4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Lewti, or the Circassian Love-Chant.”
This poem was first published in 1798. To render its flavor, here are the opening lines:
At midnight by the stream I roved,
To forget the form I loved.
Image of Lewti! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.
The Moon was high, the moonlight gleam
And the shadow of a star
Heaved upon Tamaha's stream;
But the rock shone brighter far,
The rock half sheltered from my view
By pendent boughs of tressy yew.—
So shines my Lewti's forehead fair,
Gleaming through her sable hair,
Image of Lewti! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.
So what to we learn? A lover laments his unrequited love and tries to forget that “Lewti is not kind.” A rather pedestrian way to put it; I would expect fire and rage and tumult, not this low-keyed complaint. And what’s with “Circassian”? My online dictionary informs me that the Circassians are mainly a group of Sunni Muslims of the northwestern Caucasus. But Coleridge did not have access to online dictionaries, and I suspect that he used the word for its exotic effect, its evocation of the mysteriously remote. Such effects he achieved brilliantly in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the fragment “Kubla Khan,” but alas, not so brilliantly here. And the name “Lewti,” which he evidently invented, bothers me as well. Especially in these lines:
And so with many a hope I seek
And with such joy I find my Lewti;
And even so my pale wan cheek
Drinks in as deep a flush of beauty!
Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind,
If Lewti never will be kind.
Well, he managed to rhyme “beauty” with “Lewti,” and that’s better than “bootie” or “snooty,” but the word itself — “Lewti” — bothers me. It’s just one more reason why I consider this poem concocted, steeped in an annoying exoticism, not rooted in personal experience. Which brings me no joy, for Coleridge was capable of so much better. Case, alas, closed.
No. 5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Excelsior.”
Yes, for my finale, with regret I must return to our American bard. Troubled as I am to pick on him so unreservedly, I can’t do otherwise, for this poem compels me to include it. Here’s the first stanza:
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
So is this young man hawking excelsior, an industrial product made of wood slivers and used in packaging and taxidermy? And hawking it in, of all places, the Alps? No, excelsior is surely used here in its Latin sense (yes, it comes from Latin), meaning “higher, always upward.” In this sense, in fact, it appears on the New York State seal. So what is this guy up to? The poem tells us, sort of …
"Try not the Pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
"Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast! "
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!
By now it should be clear that our hero is no ordinary mountain climber; frankly, he’s a nut. Which reminds me of some of the daredevil climbers in my previous post, “Mountains: They Entice, Delight, Kill.” And sure enough, when the monks of St. Bernard send out their hound at daybreak:
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star,
Excelsior!
So there he is, frozen dead, but sanctified by some celestial voice. Sorry, it just doesn’t cut. The damn fool got what he deserved, and maybe what he wanted. But believe me, the frozen dead aren’t “beautiful,” and they can’t help humanity in any way.
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| An 1852 illustration. |
Coincidentally, in response to my post on mountains, a friend told me of an acquaintance of his, a poet who was writing a book about volcanoes. Climbing up a volcano on a remote Japanese island, he wanted to get to the top, but a volunteer at the climbing hut urged him not to, as it was too late in the day. A risk-taker, he went on anyway, but was never seen again. He must have fallen into the volcano, but his body was never found. Even so, was he in some ways a hero? Hardly. Everyone in any way involved with him in the U.S. and Japan was thrown into crisis, the island also, and the volunteer in the climbing hut broke down in tears, convinced he should have done more to prevent the accident. And the climber left behind a wife and child. So much for “Excelsior!” Case closed.
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So there they are: my five worst poems in the English language. All from the nineteenth century, as it happens. Back then exoticism and medievalism raged in literary circles on both sides of the Atlantic, the results being sometimes charming, and sometimes deplorable. And these five poets — no, only four — could at times be deplorable. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Tennyson redeem themselves with their other work, but in Longfellow’s case, I’m not so sure. Today, who reads him? Poor guy, he’s about as hot as an icicle, as endearing as a dead fish.
Coming soon: New York Hodgepodge: Alligators, Copperheads, Velocipedes, and the Spite House
© 2020 Clifford Browder
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