# When its Godawful.



## Olly Buckle (Nov 29, 2020)

I was reading Lucky's thread about re-writing when it's Godawful and I thought, partly it depends on why it's Godawful. That made me think one man's Godawful can be another man's really readable, loads of people like Andy McNab, I don't even try reading them. It's the same reaction that means I saw the first James Bond movie when it came out and never bothered watching another, I think they are Godawful, and I know I am in a minority. but so must lots of other people be about lots of other things.

So what does 'Godawful' mean, is it purely personal taste, or are there any universal standards we can apply ? How can we tell if what we write is good or Godawful ? Is it simply that one leaves us emotional and in tears as we type and the other leaves us feeling sick, and disgusted with our inability, when we read it? Or should we rely on reactions we get from others which might be a little more objective? On the other hand they might be coming from those who think 'Shane' the ultimate in fiction


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## escorial (Nov 29, 2020)

I don't mind writing godawfull stuff and leaving it posted...when I go back I can recall why and under what circumstances I wrote it....embrace godawfull and if someone tells you it isn't then keep at it an if they agree then keep going...


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## EternalGreen (Nov 29, 2020)

Godawful means: no voice; uninteresting or cookie-cutter characters rendered poorly; confusing; doesn't focus on what the reader cares about (if anything, since we're talking about "godawful" literature here); jams the author's opinions down your throat; wooden dialogue; massive blocking errors.


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 29, 2020)

No voice is a very personal judgement, uninteresting to one is interesting to another, cookie-cutter characters rendered poorly are the very stuff of successful soap operas, I stoped watching Dark Materials because I found it confusing, and what doesn't focus on what one reader cares about is probably right up another's street, similarly if it jams the author's opinions down your throat you probably wouldn't be reading him unless they were opinions you share in the first place. Even wooden dialogue can be effective, Enid Blyton sold books by the shed load. "With lashings of ginger beer."

Is it just what's seen as Godawful at the moment? Wordsworth thought this was great, Noel Coward thought it hilarious and adapted it , I think it is Godawful.

Felicia Hemans
The stately homes of England.



THE stately Homes of England,
   How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
   O'er all the pleasant land.
The deer across their greensward bound
   Thro' shade and sunny gleam,
And the swan glides past them with the sound
   Of some rejoicing stream.


The merry Homes of England!
   Around their hearths by night,
What gladsome looks of household love
   Meet in the ruddy light!
There woman's voice flows forth in song,
   Or childhood's tale is told,
Or lips move tunefully along
   Some glorious page of old.

The blessed Homes of England!
   How softly on their bowers
Is laid the holy quietness
   That breathes from Sabbath-hours!
Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime
   Floats thro' their woods at morn;
All other sounds, in that still time,
   Of breeze and leaf are born.


The Cottage Homes of England!
   By thousands on her plains,
They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
   And round the hamlet-fanes.
Thro' glowing orchards forth they peep,
   Each from its nook of leaves,
And fearless there the lowly sleep,
   As the bird beneath the eaves.

The free, fair Homes of England!
   Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be rear'd
   To guard each hallow'd wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
   And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child's glad spirit loves
   Its country and its God! *


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## EternalGreen (Nov 29, 2020)

I do not like that poem either. I'm guessing you would have to have seen the "stately homes of England" as they existed during the early 1800's for the nostalgia to make sense. It probably just didn't age well.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Nov 29, 2020)

Then some writers/ poets are famous *because* they're so bad. William McGonagall is one such poet. He has the reputation of being one of the worst poets in the English language. Here's one of his poems and you can judge it for yourselves. The poem tells about a bridge collapse in Scotland in 1879 as a train was passing over it.  All on board were lost. 

The Tay Bridge Disaster
 by William Topaz McGonagall

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

(His poem on Edinburgh is just as bad. But McGonagall's famous and I never will be. And truth be told, I kind of like him for believing he was a fine poet.)


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## Pamelyn Casto (Nov 29, 2020)

If I correctly recall info from a course I once took, Shakespeare is one whose work has come in and out of fashion. Some eras thought he was great while other eras didn't share that opinion.  

At one time editors rejected Hemingway's work because they didn't see his work as stories-- he was ahead of their time. Then one day the world caught on and named him great. 

So many judgements, so little time . . .


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## TL Murphy (Nov 29, 2020)

Beauty is skin deep but ugly is to the bone.


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## luckyscars (Nov 30, 2020)

Being famous 'for being bad' is a different thing, in my opinion. Artists renowned for being poor are still poor, it is simply that their incompetence becomes a source of black comedy. That would be your William McGonagall, Ed Wood, Tommy Wiseau, EL James types. I don't think any sane person would call these people anything other than Godawful, but they may still be enjoyable because they are seen as funny and/or a kind of middle finger to the establishment. Essentially, their work becomes a kind of post-modern or even nihilist statement. Everything is meaningless anyway, so we might as well forge our own meaning (post-modern) or make it REALLY meaningless (nihilism). Not that most such creators are in any way visionaries in that sense, but they are fortunate enough to chance upon a few admirers and become a kind of cult thing to be read out drunk at dinner parties or whatever.

But then, additional to that, we have this layer of artists who are, in many respects, a bit shitty but that are sufficiently unique and/or likeable enough 'on the page' that their lack of ability can be come a kind of style in itself, depending wholly on who you ask and when you ask it. Who would that include? Hemingway, comes to mind for sure. The Marquis De Sade, probably. Picasso, probably. William S. Burroughs and his cut-up stuff.  A lot of painting that gets labeled as 'art naive'. A lot of other modern art and sculptures. A lot of writing that gets labeled as 'experimental' or 'surreal' or 'absurdist' or, ugh, 'avant garde'. We're talking Christopher Walken's acting; Tiny Tim's soprano singing; Andy Kaufman's comedy. Brutalist architecture. _Warhol? _Stuff that always creates strong reactions either for or against. Often, with a slight popular lean toward 'this is godawful' but with a small and loud brigade of fans who will swear up and down It Is Wonderful, creating a kind of impasse into which the work becomes Iconic.

I would consider ee cummings in this category. Already I can hear the knives come out, and that's fine. It's fine to disagree. The automatic response is 'there is no such thing as objectively good X, you know' and because we all know these are fundamentally quite personal attachments. It is hard (and, frankly, unnecessarily churlish) to argue against somebody who receives an emotional response from a poem like this. To tell them that this isn't, in fact, work of the utmost genius...



> _anyone lived in a pretty how town
> (with up so floating many bells down)
> spring summer autumn winter
> he sang his didn't he danced his did
> ...



^ Now, look, I'll say it again: *This is fine*. It's *perfectly okay* to like this sort of writing. Liking it *does not make you an idiot *or anything. But if you tell me that the merits of ee cummings achieve similar consensus-of-acclaim to the likes of Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, I am snorting _most snobbishly _because, _darling_, it just isn't so. 

Cummings poetry -- much of it, anyway -- _obviously_ doesn't have the same mastery of meter, of imagery, as most 'good poetry' does. Like Hemingway, his language is basic. Like Burroughs, it is bordering on nonsensical cut-up. The meaning is, at best, obscure and, at worst, very simplistic and silly. It is also very short. Not much 'there' there. _How can I live inside such a poem? _What I am saying is, you could tell me a ten year old wrote this and, not knowing better, I would absolutely believe you. 

Consider that you simply cannot do that with a lot of classical poetry. Or even actually most mainstream, popular modern poetry. I think most people, certainly most laypeople, to the extent they care about poetry at all, don't want nine lines of weird. You put this cummings poem up for a vote for 'Nation's Favorite Poem' and I'll put money that it won't crack the top 100, probably not even the top 1000. It isn't Wilfred Owen. It isn't Tennyson. It isn't Dylan Thomas. It isn't Oscar Wilde. It isn't Browning or even Ginsburg. It isn't even Sylvia Plath. This is weird stuff. This sort of thing is, to many boring old cretins (who, like it or not, have a controlling stake here) sort of 'Godawful', yeah_._

But that's okay! It's okay because, for those who like it, it carries an emotional value and, at the end of the day, that is what matters in writing. It's  trying to do something new and succeeding. It deserves credit for that. It deserves acceptance and a place in the canon. However, yes, we must also be halfway rational and admit that this sort of thing has limits when assessed academically and culturally and the reason it belongs in the canon it is mostly because it is unique and experimental far more than because it is something that most of us ill-educated proles want etched on their headstone or read out at their grandfather's funeral or the other avenues in which 'good poetry' tends to touch mainstream consciousness. 

It's just _harder_ to advocate for this type of writing as being good, much less 'the greatest of all time', than it tends to be for, say, Percy Shelley...you know? I think we can call this godawful...if we want to.


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## bdcharles (Nov 30, 2020)

I think it needs at least one redeeming feature.


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## BornForBurning (Nov 30, 2020)

Speaking as a writer (not a poet, because I am terrible at poetry) part of the reason McGonagall's work is so terrible is it comes across as trite. He writes about a horrific disaster in the same tone you'd use to read off a child's nursery rhyme. So it's either the worst kind of mockery, or just utterly failing in its intended purpose. Aka immoral or incompetent. Two things that art should never be.


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 30, 2020)

EternalGreen said:


> I do not like that poem either. I'm guessing you would have to have seen the "stately homes of England" as they existed during the early 1800's for the nostalgia to make sense. It probably just didn't age well.



No. She lived in Boston, US and had never been to England, it's not distance in time, it is ill informed rubbish. "The cottages of England in thousands on her plains." is about America, not England. We have got Sailsbury Plain, I can't think of any others bigger than about an acre or so, it is practically uninhabited. She wrote reams of this stuff about freedom loving sturdy Swiss peasants and such. God knows what Wordsworth was thinking of to praise it, it is out and out crap, maybe he fancied her 

On the other hand I quite like the one about the Tay bridge disaster, it deals with reality and if you read it aloud it has got something.


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## midnightpoet (Nov 30, 2020)

I suppose you have to wonder, if it was so godawful, how did it get published?  I remember reading a book by Bill Pronzini about the old hard-boiled writers of the past saying basically they were often so ridiculous as to provide the reader with some amusement.  Of course, back in the 20's and 30's if the editors thought it could sell, print it.  Not sure it's much different now.:joker:


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## Matchu (Nov 30, 2020)

Ingredients for a Godawful, chapter 1

- Sunlight streams through the window, shadows bounce across furniture.  Our character yawns, her breasts are wonderful, she considers as she rises for breakfast.
- Dust motes continue to dance in the sunlight of the bedroom.
- She opens the curtain with a tendril.
- Walks to the lavatory like a marionette.

ummm...


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 30, 2020)

I put up a new video today that I really don't know about, there are 11 minutes of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afcsx3JF3sc and it could be really good or it could be godawful, I am honestly unsure. It has lots of the qualities associated with Godawful, the characters are not developed, the plot is pretty non-existent, the setting is vague. I like it, but maybe that's just bias.


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## luckyscars (Nov 30, 2020)

'Godawful' is a funny word, come to think of it. "This isn't just awful, it's *as awful as God Himself is*"


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 30, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> 'Godawful' is a funny word, come to think of it. "This isn't just awful, it's *as awful as God Himself is*"



Well, if you ever meet it is a fair bet you will be filled with awe


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## luckyscars (Dec 1, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> Speaking as a writer (not a poet, because I am terrible at poetry) part of the reason McGonagall's work is so terrible is it comes across as trite. He writes about a horrific disaster in the same tone you'd use to read off a child's nursery rhyme. So it's either the worst kind of mockery, or just utterly failing in its intended purpose. Aka immoral or incompetent. Two things that art should never be.



I think this is an underrated point. I dismissed it at first because there are examples of flippant writing about bad things that are not awful (_gory, gory what a helluva way to die_) but, having given it more thought, I'm thinking that the perception of humanity -- or lack of -- behind writing is quite important. Intent matters. To put it in very colloquial terms: "How _hip _is it?"

Genuinely bad writers are never 'cool'. 

Not to say writing needs to be 'nice' or 'appropriate' or anything like that, only that it needs to be likeable, in some way. Likeability (I'm sure there is a better word, but I don't know it -- attractiveness maybe?) of the underlying intent and, in some way, the artist themselves forms part of the impression.

 The reason lots of people think Vincent Van Gogh was the greatest painter of all time isn't because he definitely is (he is simply a good painter) but because, in part, they are attracted to the idea of a tortured visionary artist, maybe even somebody a _little bit mad_. We are especially attracted to this in a Victorian context, for some reason.


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## EternalGreen (Dec 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> But then, additional to that, we have this layer of artists who are, in many respects, a bit shitty but that are sufficiently unique and/or likeable enough 'on the page' that their lack of ability can be come a kind of style in itself, depending wholly on who you ask and when you ask it. Who would that include? Hemingway, comes to mind for sure.



So you admit Hemmingway is bad?


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## EternalGreen (Dec 2, 2020)

Olly Buckle said:


> I put up a new video today that I really don't know about, there are 11 minutes of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afcsx3JF3sc and it could be really good or it could be godawful, I am honestly unsure. It has lots of the qualities associated with Godawful, the characters are not developed, the plot is pretty non-existent, the setting is vague. I like it, but maybe that's just bias.



It's certainly not godawful. It's an interesting listen.


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## BornForBurning (Dec 3, 2020)

> To put it in very colloquial terms: "How _hip is it?"_


Thinking on this again. Maybe it's because McGonagall pulls me to a place I never want to be...a place of genuine foolishness. That might be just my perception of his work. I don't know. While I certainly don't ascribe _malice _to his poetry, I do ascribe a kind of childish idiocy. Cause who the heck writes a poem about a horrific train crash to the metre of 'Jack and Jill went up a hill.' 

Or maybe, macabre nursery rhymes are just out of style. Maybe they should stay out of style. 



> _gory, gory what a helluva way to die_


And here's the thing. Both this and McGonagall evoke definite feelings in the reader. This more than McGonagall, at least for me, because I can connect with the violent nihilism. I've been there. But they do both evoke. The question is, is what they are evoking worthwhile?


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Dec 3, 2020)

"Gory, gory what a helluva way to die," I think is more black humor than violent nihilism. It's a jody/cadence. (The version I've heard is "Gory glory, what a helluva way to die, with your rifle on your back as you're falling from the sky" but I think there's multiple versions, as there are with most older cadences). Maybe black humor is the wrong word for what it's expressing, but it's kinda just the vibe of the Motorhead song "Death or Glory" + Vietnam-war-feel banter. It's not _always _healthy, but it can be, and it's weirdly motivating in certain situations. A LOT of cadences have a similar vibe ("C-130," "They Say that in the Army/Air Force", etc.)

All that to say, there is a situation where silly meter + serious subject is artistically and/or morally acceptable. "When the toast has burned and all the milk has turned / and Captain Crunch is waving farewell / When the Big One finds you may this song remind you / that they don't serve breakfast in hell" (The Newsboys). McGonogall is just incompetent, as far as I can tell.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 3, 2020)

Some critics have claimed McGonagall suffered from autism but others deny that idea. I read that he also earned money by working in circuses where people were allowed to pelt him with fruits as he read his poetry-- but he didn't seem to see that as insulting in any way. I guess sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do to earn his living. He and his work strike me as bit innocent (I'd also include "naive" if I knew how to spell it) and I'd guess he thought his poetry was just fine. I view his work as incompetent too-- he doesn't seem to be trying to be humorous in any way. It's pretty amazing how often his work was published and even more amazing that his work still lives. Over time there have been lots of incompetent writers and they were quickly forgotten.


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## Olly Buckle (Dec 3, 2020)

The Tay Bridge Disaster is fine by me. The last Sabbath day of 1879 should not be forgotten for a very long time, it is a message worth repeating, and builders should be admonished to do as thorough a job as they can. I would take 'naive' but that is not bad. Felicia in The Stately Homes, on the other hand, is purveying mist and smoke. Victorian peasants lived and died in misery, starvation, filth and poverty overseen by landlords who built themselves palaces filled with servants, it is all one big lie concealing unpalatable truths. Give me Dickens and McGonagall and a bit of truth saying any day, though actually only seventy five died, not ninety.


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## Matchu (Dec 3, 2020)

When I was on the OU I wanted to celebrate our truly 'awful writing' like an 'outsider art,' a genre of our own [making], and was keen for the anthology's pursuit.  

None of my fellow students grasped the vision.  

After a while, any reader became attuned to those earthy kind of drafts, the pain of a total disaster rolling from one page to another page.  One would feel an author's despair, the distinction slipping from her fingers. Agony to read, and an addiction like our Joy Division music.  Soon I preferred those honest stories to any 'real' stories written by people with leather patches; the hewn from soil, soiled in kindness, hundreds of grandma in care home stories, fat man dancing ballet tutus, alien sex, sickly Scottish vista poetry.  'I breathed...' and  'I took another breath' stories.

Yours,
Pomp Ass


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## bazz cargo (Dec 3, 2020)

I miss Terry Pratchett...


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## Olly Buckle (Dec 5, 2020)

Incompetent? How do you measure competence? I reckon more people have read the whole of The Tay Bridge Disaster  than have read anything by Wordsworth, they may know the first couple of lines, 'I wandered lonely as a cloud when all at once I saw a crowd ...' but I bet not one in a hundred reads to the end relishing every word, then re-reads, like they do the Tay bridge. That is competence of a sort.


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## VRanger (Dec 5, 2020)

The discussion of the word/phrase "godawful" interested me, so I did some digging. The first reported use is in the 1870s, and it didn't come into more common usage until the 1920s. The most convincing discussion I read believes it to be shorthand for "God's Awful Vengeance" (or Judgement). To me, that suggests it being originally used in place of "Goddamn", which at times and/or places in history would have made a piece of writing unpublishable in any form. Like many pieces of colloquialism, no matter its original intent, it rolls downhill until nestling into the spot where it becomes stuck forever after.


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## Olly Buckle (Dec 5, 2020)

vranger said:


> The discussion of the word/phrase "godawful" interested me, so I did some digging. The first reported use is in the 1870s, and it didn't come into more common usage until the 1920s. The most convincing discussion I read believes it to be shorthand for "God's Awful Vengeance" (or Judgement). To me, that suggests it being originally used in place of "Goddamn", which at times and/or places in history would have made a piece of writing unpublishable in any form. Like many pieces of colloquialism, no matter its original intent, it rolls downhill until nestling into the spot where it becomes stuck forever after.



Lovely right to the end; but you don't want to go believing that "Ever after" tosh. Like The Black Eyed Peas sang "Nothing is forever". Really, nothing.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 5, 2020)

You're right, Olly Buckle, that "incompetent" might not be the best word choice for describing McGonagall's work. He certainly did/does have his appeal to many. He's famous for his work and most of us never will be so I guess that does speak of at least some kind of competence. Readers like what readers like.


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## VRanger (Dec 6, 2020)

Pamelyn Casto said:


> You're right, Olly Buckle, that "incompetent" might not be the best word choice for describing McGonagall's work. He certainly did/does have his appeal to many. He's famous for his work and most of us never will be so I guess that does speak of at least some kind of competence. Readers like what readers like.



"I don't know literature, but I know what I like!" LOL


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## luckyscars (Dec 6, 2020)

EternalGreen said:


> So you admit Hemmingway is bad?



I certainly admit he can be viewed as pretty bad. I think even most diehard Hemingway fans would admit that he has many of the hallmarks that often come with 'bad writers' -- simplistic characterization, awkward dialogue, stagnant voice, simplistic/repetitious themes. A general lack of any real innovation whatsoever (all Hemingway books basically read identically). 

Of course, I would not call Hemingway Godawful. I happen to think he is a fantastic writer and could easily spend a whole thread explaining why. But, regardless, I can absolutely see why others would disagree that he is _for reasons other than ignorance. 

_This places him in a certain tier. The only qualifier for that tier is whether the competency of the 'great author' in question could be reasonably debunked. In Hemingway's case, it is clear that he could be. You could put James Joyce in that tier, too. Cormac McCarthy? Probably, sure. Vonnegut? Yeah. Faulkner? Definitely. 

I would contrast that with a writer like Shakespeare. Again, this isn't a matter of personal taste, it's perfectly acceptable to hate Shakespeare -- I'm certainly not a fan or anything. What it is simply NOT reasonable to do is to say that because one does not like Shakespeare that he is a bad writer...because he objectively is not a bad writer. There is simply NO argument I am aware of that makes sense for why Shakespeare is a poor writer other than 'I don't like him', 'he is boring', 'old fashioned' etc. And these are obviously not grownup arguments. 

Ditto for numerous other writers, playwrights and poets. This is the tier of 'objective proficiency', the level at which one's work becomes part of literary study in schools and universities for reasons not born of 'this fellow sure marched to the beat of his own drum, didn't he?'. No right minded person is going to say that Walt Whitman was a bad poet. He may not be a perfect poet, nor one that everybody appreciates, but he is obviously still, at minimum, a very good poet. How good, of course, is open to debate, as we re-enter subjective territory, and that's fine...but there is simply no way to question the basic proficiency of Whitman without sounding a bit stupid. 



BornForBurning said:


> And here's the thing. Both this and McGonagall evoke definite feelings in the reader. This more than McGonagall, at least for me, because I can connect with the violent nihilism. I've been there. But they do both evoke. The question is, is what they are evoking worthwhile?



Fair enough but, I would point out, that violent nihilism is _really _common. As in, probably the most common theme there is. It's ingrained in the human condition and you don't get much kudos for simply reflecting it in literature. If we wanted violent nihilism, we could publish most teenage diaries. As a result, it's pretty boring, almost the equivalent of simply stating reality.

My main gripe with McGonagall, to the extent I have any reaction to it whatsoever, is that it's boring. I think boringness is probably the biggest determining factor of whether something truly is godawful. 

I have now attempted to read the poem five times since it was evoked in this thread and I simply cannot finish it. Not because it is incompetent, though it is, but because it is not something that feels like a human being has written it. That lack of humanity makes it incredibly dry, highly impersonal, essentially a pooling of the laziest and most obvious 'reactions' to a tragic event. It feels indifferent. 

It's ironic, because the poem itself is ostensibly about the human tragedy. Except it isn't, really, because none of the lines that actually reference the tragedy itself have anything to do with human emotions. Consider this line...



> And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
> Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down



Let's consider a moment how batshit this is. Nobody's _real _reaction to a mass tragedy is to proclaim 'Good heavens! The bridge has fallen down!' That isn't how people actually respond to terrible events. Nobody in New York was actually shouting 'Good Heavens! The towers!" after 9/11, right? "Oh the humanity"? Sure, "the zeppelin has fallen, good heavens!"? No. People do not react this way.

Yet just about every mentioning McGonagall makes of the human, emotional response is like this. There's no sense at any point that these are real people, with real lives being torn apart, whatsoever. There's no detail given about any of the passengers. Instead, the poet labors on pointless, extended and haughty metaphors regarding the wind, weather and the structure of the bridge (these are all given far more personality than the people themselves) and seems to obsess with irrelevant details - he seems to think it's very important to constantly remind the reader that this happened on the Sabbath Day of 1879, but there is no link made clear. 



> I must now conclude my lay
> By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
> That your central girders would not have given way,
> At least many sensible men do say,
> ...



His conclusion is perhaps the most obnoxious of all. In McGonagall's brain, the most inspiring message he finds is...that the bridge should have been built better. Besides the fact this makes him sound like a smug asshole, it's just so boring. Everybody knows the solution to stop bridges falling down is to build them better. It simply has nothing to do with the purpose of the poem, which could ONLY be to provide a personalized and heartbreaking account of the disaster. There were lots of opportunities here. He could even have stuck with the stupid 'build a better bridge' message if he had bothered to link it to, say, the human impact stemming from the rampant lack of regulation on capitalism and industrial development that was a huge problem at the time. He could have politicized it, perhaps. Sure, why not, that might have been interesting -- it seems like he almost wanted to do that but simply couldn't figure out how, or couldn't be bothered.

But no, he literally is saying nothing. And that, IMO, is what makes it 'godawful'.


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## EternalGreen (Dec 7, 2020)

The following poem meets multiple criteria for being "godawful" but it's famous.

"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

_Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice 
Is also great
And would suffice._

First of all, it's _extremely _vague. The poem invokes zero concrete images, sounds, etc. and simply tells the poet's feelings *as abstractly as possible*. The meter doesn't make any sense, so the rhymes are extremely grating. Some people argue it's a synopsis of Dante's inferno, but a synopsis is the opposite of everything a poem should _be_.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 7, 2020)

luckyscars wrote: "Cummings poetry -- much of it, anyway -- _obviously doesn't have the same mastery of meter, of imagery, as most 'good poetry' does. Like Hemingway, his language is basic. Like Burroughs, it is bordering on nonsensical cut-up. The meaning is, at best, obscure and, at worst, very simplistic and silly. It is also very short. Not much 'there' there. How can I live inside such a poem? What I am saying is, you could tell me a ten year old wrote this and, not knowing better, I would absolutely believe you."

__**I would call E. E. Cummings a brilliant poet._ I often think of "in Just" and "i sing of Olaf glad and big" shakes me every time I read it. Many of his poems have a strong effect on me-- his work often gets me thinking for hours. His writing legacy is pretty amazing-- so many startling pieces. He's been recognized as brilliant by many and many more are lately re-discovering his work-- people who hadn't paid it much attention before are finding out how important and meaningful his work really is. It was surprising to see his work could mistaken for that written by a ten-year-old. That would have to be one genius of a ten-year-old!


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## VRanger (Dec 7, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> His conclusion is perhaps the most obnoxious of all. In McGonagall's brain, the most inspiring message he finds is...that the bridge should have been built better. Besides the fact this makes him sound like a smug asshole, it's just so boring. Everybody knows the solution to stop bridges falling down is to build them better. It simply has nothing to do with the purpose of the poem, which could ONLY be to provide a personalized and heartbreaking account of the disaster.



You may not have read the history of the Tay Bridge. I did just yesterday. Considerable attention was put to the subject of the myriad issues concerning the way the bridge was built. The circumstances did NOT revolve around it "should have been built better". An extensive investigation and review by other civil engineers showed that the entire structural design was insufficient, cores to determine the depth of bedrock were bungled, the metal casters took cost saving shortcuts in fabrication, bolt holes were improperly bored, the wrong nuts were used on braces, the engineer in charge did not properly inspect fabrication or even the ongoing construction, the man assigned operational maintenance had no qualifications to inspect a bridge of that type (he was a bricklayer), and trains routinely ran over the speed limit imposed because it was known the bridge had too much sway.

Any one of these factors would have been a scandal. All together it was a mass of incompetence which outraged the nation (and from the tone of Olly's posts, that pain is still felt by some). That is the atmosphere in which the poem was written, so yes, it has everything to do with the purpose of the poem.


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## luckyscars (Dec 7, 2020)

Pamelyn Casto said:


> **I would call E. E. Cummings a brilliant poet. I often think of "in Just" and "i sing of Olaf glad and big" shakes me every time I read it. Many of his poems have a strong effect on me-- his work often gets me thinking for hours. His writing legacy is pretty amazing-- so many startling pieces. He's been recognized as brilliant by many and many more are lately re-discovering his work-- people who hadn't paid it much attention before are finding out how important and meaningful his work really is. It was surprising to see his work could mistaken for that written by a ten-year-old. That would have to be one genius of a ten-year-old!




That's a perfectly acceptable opinion to have. The point isn't that ee cummings is ineligible for acclaim (for the record, I quite like him) but simply that how good he is is contentious. Not only is he obviously not going to be everybody's cup of tea (which is subjective) but one could critique his skills on quite sound footing. His language can be juvenile, for instance. He has unusual uses of language. He can be repetitive. A little esoteric and abstract, at times vague.

Let's look at one of his better regarded poems, I Carry Your Heart...



> i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
> my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
> i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
> by only me is your doing,my darling)
> ...



Again, I could agree that on a subjective level this is perfectly good poetry. My point is simply that one could point to various features of it (such as the run on sentences and apparent non sequiturs, the lack of concrete language, the strange parethesis) and call it bad poetry and not necessarily sound ignorant. It's merits are far more subjective than 'traditional' poetry. 

Likewise, 'Guernica' by Picasso and 'Mona Lisa' by Da Vinci are both 'good' paintings. However, Guernica is untraditional, unconventional, and 'weird'. Mona Lisa is essentially a traditional portrait. The lack of traditional proficiency in Picasso makes it more difficult to achieve anything close to consensus on his merits, certainly to anywhere near the same level as in Da Vinci's painting. Nobody considers the Mona Lisa a bad painting. At the very most it's subjectively _uninteresting_ painting, but never 'godawful'. Picasso you can reasonably dismiss as a godawful painter, as many people did during his lifetime and over the years since. It's harder to claim those people are wrong.


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## luckyscars (Dec 7, 2020)

vranger said:


> You may not have read the history of the Tay Bridge. I did just yesterday. Considerable attention was put to the subject of the myriad issues concerning the way the bridge was built. The circumstances did NOT revolve around it "should have been built better". An extensive investigation and review by other civil engineers showed that the entire structural design was insufficient, cores to determine the depth of bedrock were bungled, the metal casters took cost saving shortcuts in fabrication, bolt holes were improperly bored, the wrong nuts were used on braces, the engineer in charge did not properly inspect fabrication or even the ongoing construction, the man assigned operational maintenance had no qualifications to inspect a bridge of that type (he was a bricklayer), and trains routinely ran over the speed limit imposed because it was known the bridge had too much sway.
> 
> Any one of these factors would have been a scandal. All together it was a mass of incompetence which outraged the nation (and from the tone of Olly's posts, that pain is still felt by some). That is the atmosphere in which the poem was written, so yes, it has everything to do with the purpose of the poem.



That isn't really the point I am making though. My point is that the poem fails to capture the spirit of the message...not that there is no valid message to be conveyed. I'm sure there is.

I want to compare this Tay Bridge poem, as a poem about a tragedy, to a well-known poem about a tragedy _The Charge Of The Light Brigade. _They are both about an organizational screw-up leading to mass death. The difference is that Tennyson is able to make the stakes truly felt by capturing the emotional anguish, the atmosphere, the human loss. Not by being wildly sentimental or graphic or anything, but simply by making the reader feel as though they know who these people are, that the people are real people who are being slaughtered...



> Flashed all their sabres bare,
> Flashed as they turned in air
> Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while
> All the world wondered.
> ...



So, I don't think this is remarkably different to what McGonagall is probably going for. He seems to want to capture the scale of the calamity. The difference is the McGonagall is unable to utilize language to capture the moment in as Tennyson does. By using the simple 'not the six hundred' refrain, Tennyson is able to say something very important -- that men in war are numbers. This contrasts perfectly with the rest of the poem that completely shreds that fallacy to pieces. Tay Bridge is simply describing, in the most perfunctory way possible, the event and its 'meaning'.


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## VRanger (Dec 7, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> That isn't really the point I am making though.



For not being your point, you harped on it pretty strongly. It looks like you completely misunderstand the time, the event, and what the poet was going for. Until you get a handle on that, you won't be able to validly comment on it. You can comment on whether you personally appreciate the verbiage, and that's fine. But you're completely missing the why of it.

Go to Wikipedia and read the entire account of the building of the bridge and the aftermath. It takes a while, but after you read it, when you go back to the poem you'll get it. Bear in mind the poem wasn't written for you to read 140 years later. It was written in the day for people familiar with the circumstances.


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## luckyscars (Dec 7, 2020)

vranger said:


> For not being your point, you harped on it pretty strongly. It looks like you completely misunderstand the time, the event, and what the poet was going for. Until you get a handle on that, you won't be able to validly comment on it. You can comment on whether you personally appreciate the verbiage, and that's fine. But you're completely missing the why of it.
> 
> Go to Wikipedia and read the entire account of the building of the bridge and the aftermath. It takes a while, but after you read it, when you go back to the poem you'll get it. Bear in mind the poem wasn't written for you to read 140 years later. It was written in the day for people familiar with the circumstances.



I don't think I missed the why of it. I said "He could even have stuck with the stupid 'build a better bridge' message if he had bothered to link it to, say, the human impact stemming from the rampant lack of regulation on capitalism and industrial development that was a huge problem at the time." That seems like it was actually his goal -- otherwise I don't see the point. It just doesn't work.

Nobody, not then and not now, reads poetry to get told by some wheezy poet that bridges should be built better. That is what journalism and engineers are for. Poetry is supposed to convey a human experience with a human meaning. If you think it's a good poem with a strong message, I shan't argue with you, but when we talk about what makes certain things 'godawful' it is invariably when they fail to connect with us. 

Bottom line: You can tell me all day that I am wrong for not appreciating the poem, but it isn't my role as a reader to figure out 'what the poet was going for' nor take into account 'the why of it'. The readers role is to read in good faith. The writer has to do everything else. When they do not, or cannot, the result is godawful.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 7, 2020)

Luckyscars wrote: Again, I could agree that on a subjective level this is perfectly good poetry. My point is simply that one could point to various features of it (such as the run on sentences and apparent non sequiturs, the lack of concrete language, the strange parethesis) and call it bad poetry and not necessarily sound ignorant. It's merits are far more subjective than 'traditional' poetry.

***But Cummings is known for his breaking of poetry traditions. I Carry Your Heart isn't one of my favorites but I'm pretty sure if I took the time to analyze what all he's doing in the poem I'd be amazed all over again over how he does what he does so well. Yes, you could point to various features and call it bad. But it might be helpful to understand what Cummings was doing in his work--he was usually busy "saying it new"! He was busy breaking old ideas of sentence structure, grammar, capitalization, spacing, and much more. To me the usually bad poets are those who try to emulate Cummings but who don't really get what he's doing so as a result they turn out rather silly "copycat" pieces. Cummings is one of my favorites. He's truly amazing and has kept me in thought for many an hour.  I'm already sensing much more in I Carry Your Heart that I first thought. That happens to me with all of Cummings' work-- there's much more there than meets the quick, glancing eye.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 7, 2020)

luckyscars wrote: Tay Bridge is simply describing, in the most perfunctory way possible, the event and its 'meaning'.

***But he believed in his poems, he published many of them in handbills, and he's a poet who is remembered--mainly by people who claim he was one of the worst poets, and by, I'd guess, the non-poet people who likely needed someone to commemorate or give shape to that horrible disaster. McGonagall did it. I have no doubt he was shaken by that disaster and managed to create a poem that at least communicated, the best he could, about the horrific event. 

vranger wrote: Bear in mind the poem wasn't written for you to read 140 years later. It was written in the day for people familiar with the circumstances.

*** Great point. I imagine that poem was kept by many appreciative people-- particularly people personally affected by that disaster. I imagine those people at that time might got a lot of their news from handbills and McGonagall's poem told them what happened in a way that was understandable to others trying to figure out what happened and what might be done to prevent such things in the future. A poem, I think, can be labeled good by lay people and then labeled not good by poetry scholars. I recall a book of poems my grandmother kept. I'd not heard of any of the poets and I thought the contents were awfully sentimental, trite, sing-songy, etc. But my grandmother loved it and it gave her enough comfort that she kept that collection by her side most of her life. There's huge value in that, good poems or not.


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## BornForBurning (Dec 7, 2020)

> My main gripe with McGonagall, to the extent I have any reaction to it whatsoever, is that it's boring. I think boringness is probably the biggest determining factor of whether something truly is godawful.


See, I actually don't find him boring. I find myself alternatively laughing and cringing as I read his work. I'm not sure that I'm _meant _to be laughing. But I laugh regardless, because there's a kind of brilliant incompetence that just lands so imperfectly. The cringe, I've covered that already. But that's what I meant when I said he evokes definite feelings in the reader. 

I agree that boringness is probably the best measure of incompetence we have in the arts. Unfortunately, with regards to the _Tay Bridge Disaster_ this starts to break down, because the incompetence is constructed in such a way as to be genuinely and consistently funny. The way I've put this to people IRL is (usually regarding bad movies) "it continues to find new and shocking ways to be bad." Like, just when you've finished laughing at the horrible monster-suit, the cameraman forgets to hold the shot properly and you notice said monster is wearing sneakers. That's funny. 


> Bear in mind the poem wasn't written for you to read 140 years later. It was written in the day for people familiar with the circumstances.


Collapsing the value of a poem into the perspective of its contemporaries isn't a very good argument for why moderns should 'get' it. The 'point' of the poem certainly is that the bridge should have been built better, I agree. But I stand by my initial position that the way it's communicated comes across as very trite, and thus foolish. Aka homicide to the tune of Jack and Jill. I don't know why placing myself in the shoes of those emotionally closest to the disaster makes this any better. To my eyes, it makes it so much worse.


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## luckyscars (Dec 7, 2020)

Pamelyn Casto said:


> But Cummings is known for his breaking of poetry traditions. I Carry Your Heart isn't one of my favorites but I'm pretty sure if I took the time to analyze what all he's doing in the poem I'd be amazed all over again over how he does what he does so well. Yes, you could point to various features and call it bad. But it might be helpful to understand what Cummings was doing in his work--he was usually busy "saying it new"! He was busy breaking old ideas of sentence structure, grammar, capitalization, spacing, and much more. To me the usually bad poets are those who try to emulate Cummings but who don't really get what he's doing so as a result they turn out rather silly "copycat" pieces. Cummings is one of my favorites. He's truly amazing and has kept me in thought for many an hour.  I'm already sensing much more in I Carry Your Heart that I first thought. That happens to me with all of Cummings' work-- there's much more there than meets the quick, glancing eye.



Yes, I agree. But the unfortunate reality is that many writers who are known for 'breaking poetry traditions' are divisive as a result. Traditions exist for a reason. 

Which music displays greater talent, experimental jazz or The Beatles? It's somewhat a moot question because there's so many means by which to measure, they are so different, etc. But, let's consider it simply in light of what we expect the majority of listeners to believe is better and I think most would probably land on The Beatles because it is more traditionally, more recognizable 'as good music'. 

I think that comparison is pretty apt in writing. There are lots of books and poems that are stylistically the equivalent of conventional music - Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe -- and are generally considered effective and it makes no sense to put those in the same category as books like 'Naked Lunch' or Hemingway or poems like 'I Carry Your Heart' which, while they may be _genius _and _groundbreaking _are quite polarizing because for every person who considers their idiosyncrasies to be valuable/important there can be an equally-knowledgeable person who considers them marks of incompetency and _has an argument _for that belief.



BornForBurning said:


> Collapsing the value of a poem into the perspective of its contemporaries isn't a very good argument for why moderns should 'get' it.



Amen. It's probably the most irritating 'argument' that people like to bring out, whether it's to defend against poor racial handling or anything else: "You should accept it now because it's old and things were different", as though criticism has an expiry date.

It doesn't even make sense, because if old poetry cannot be condemned due to modern people not understanding it, then by what mechanism can it be acclaimed? Surely the lack of understanding works both ways? If I am not capable of understanding Tay Bridge enough to speak negatively of it, then why would somebody else be capable of understanding it enough to talk about how good it is? Either we can talk about old things or we cannot....and if we ARE going to talk about them then we should treat them fairly. Otherwise it's just forelock-tugging ancestor worship.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 7, 2020)

luckyscars wrote: Yes, I agree. But the unfortunate reality is that many writers who are known for 'breaking poetry traditions' are divisive as a result. Traditions exist for a reason. Which music displays greater talent, experimental jazz or The Beatles? It's somewhat a moot question because there's so many means by which to measure, they are so different, etc. But, let's consider it simply in light of what we expect the majority of listeners to believe is better and I think most would probably land on The Beatles because it is more traditionally, more recognizable 'as good music'.

***What's wrong with breaking poetry traditions and being divisive as a result? We don't keep the same traditions in literature or in music (or in art) It changes else it would become quite boring. For instance, I couldn't be content with reading or listening to "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water," a traditional child's poem, all the way into my adulthood.  I eventually outgrew it and moved on to more challenging work and ideas. I can still value the traditional child's poem but I need a lot more from poems in my adulthood. 

Shakespeare's work has come in and out of fashion. Different eras view him differently (some view him as great, some as not so great). 

Hemingway was often rejected until the editors caught on that he was ahead of his time and now many consider his work great. He certainly wrote one of my favorite short-short stories, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." It's excellent. (I haven't read his longer work.) Anton Chekhov broke all sorts of rules and many consider him one of the best and even those who've not read his work at least know the name. Same with Kafka. Raymond Carver broke rules and his untraditional work got him noticed and plenty of readers love him. (I was doing some research on a particular kind of poem or story and I found some interesting, tradition-breaking, Carver poems too.)

Then last night I was reading one of the most horrific, terrifying short-shorts stories ever. It's David Foster Wallace's "Incarnations of Burnt Children." It made me break down in sobs it's so painful and so horrible and so moving. To achieve what Wallace did in that story required breaking some rules. (His fast, run-on sentences are perfect for showing the horror taking place. I think the entire 1,000 plus words short-short was just four or five sentences.) Many would consider it "flash fiction" (or "sudden fiction") and flash fiction itself has come in and out of fashion. Right now it's earned its way into college lit courses and into creative writing courses. 

Maybe traditions do exist for a reason and traditional things can be great. But we also need to allow our ideas to grow, to change, to expand, to move away from or to enlarge what's considered to be traditional. We can continue to value what's been done before but something new, different, non-traditional, can be refreshing and can gain readers who are a bit tired of the traditional ways.


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## luckyscars (Dec 7, 2020)

Pamelyn Casto said:


> What's wrong with breaking poetry traditions and being divisive as a result?
> 
> Maybe traditions do exist for a reason and traditional things can be great. But we also need to allow our ideas to grow, to change, to expand, to move away from or to enlarge what's considered to be traditional. We can continue to value what's been done before but something new, different, non-traditional, can be refreshing and can gain readers who are a bit tired of the traditional ways.



Did I say there was anything wrong with it?

I'm merely pointing out that divisive things tend to result in divided opinion.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 7, 2020)

Lucky scars wrote: I'm merely pointing out that divisive things tend to result in divided opinion.

*** Well, that point does seem obvious.  A new way of writing, new way of painting, or even a new vaccine does divide people. So be it. 

In an earlier post you said: "But the unfortunate reality is that many writers who are known for 'breaking poetry traditions' are divisive as a result. Traditions exist for a reason." And you said, "while they may be _genius and groundbreaking are quite polarizing because for every person who considers their idiosyncrasies to be valuable/important there can be an equally-knowledgeable person who considers them marks of incompetency and has an argument for that belief." And you  (earlier) labeled Cummings' work as nonsensical and something a ten-year-old might write. From these comments, I understand you to be suggesting that traditional is better. 

Maybe the discussion actually revolves around what might be considered literary and what might be considered mainstream poems, stories, novels. Both can exist and both can be viewed as great by their readers. (Some works manage to be loved by both sides.) _


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## luckyscars (Dec 7, 2020)

Pamelyn Casto said:


> _And you (earlier) labeled Cummings' work as nonsensical and something a ten-year-old might write. _



I understand it may have sounded that way, but what I actually said is _you could tell me a ten year old wrote it and, not knowing better, I would believe you.
_
I know it sounds like hair-splitting but the point I was making was not that I think Cummings' work is low in quality (I'm actually quite a fan of much of it!) simply that I could see why _others _would say so because of the reasons I gave. I feel like I did go to some lengths to say I did not think Cummings was godawful though, in the following from the same post...



luckyscars said:


> carries an emotional value and, at the end of the day, *that is what matters in writing*. It's trying to do something new *and succeeding*. It deserves credit for that. It deserves *acceptance and a place in the canon*. However, yes, we must also be halfway rational and admit that this sort of thing *has limits when assessed academically and culturally* and the reason it belongs in the canon it is mostly *because it is unique and experimental far more than because it is something that most of us ill-educated proles want etched on their headstone or read out at their grandfather's funeral or the other avenues in which 'good poetry' tends to touch mainstream consciousness. *
> 
> It's just* harder* to advocate for this type of writing as being good, much less 'the greatest of all time', than it tends to be for, say, Percy Shelley...you know? I think we can call this godawful...*if we want to*.



Not to sit on the fence or anything, but to move away from that particular point: The original question was on the nature of what bad writing is and what it isn't. 

In addressing such a question, I think it's important not merely to dwell on the low hanging fruit of obvious abominations that everybody knows and loves, because there's not much to say.

 Rather, I think we should talk about the meaning of the term in the context of writing more broadly: Why is it so common that the same writer can be beloved in some circles and despised in others, while other writers seem to cruise along successfully without much sneering at? Why do some bad books piss us off, while others make us laugh? 

What is the difference? Is the difference to do with subject matter -- do writers who are more milquetoast tend to seem less 'godawful' than others, even if they are actually worse at the craft? Is it to do with certain emotions? Do certain writers inspire hatred not because they are incompetent but because they create feelings of animosity for some reason? Does it have to do with snobbery, perhaps? Is perhaps the reason why certain books are perceived as godawful have more to do with some sense that they Did Not Deserve *It*? 

In short, *what is the anatomy of Godawful?* From what is it born and where does it primarily live? What does it feed on?


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## EternalGreen (Dec 7, 2020)

Authorial narcissism fuels godawful writing.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 9, 2020)

EternalGreen said:


> The following poem meets multiple criteria for being "godawful" but it's famous.
> 
> "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost
> 
> ...



I'd love it if we could take a close look at this poem. I'm with you, EternalGreen, in that I can't see it as one of the great poems. It puzzles me why it's a well-known poem. It strikes me as as a bit too . . .  clever? Cleverly contrived? I imagine, though, if someone explained it to me, if someone pointed out its great features, then I'd learn to appreciate it more. I like a lot of Frost's work but this one wouldn't go onto my top ten favorites. 

It has a rhyme scheme (ABA ABC BCB) but the rhyming feels a bit light for the heaviness of the subject matter. I also somewhat understand its relationship to  Dante's Inferno . . . but something seems a little bit . . . insincere, maybe? Clever keeps coming to mind. I don't know what's bothering me about the poem but it does bother me for some reason. 

But at the same time I can easily imagine this as one of those wonderfully "sticky" poems that a person can quick mentally recite during a puzzling or terrifying bout of desire's fire or of hatred's ice. I can now imagine it can serve as a reminder poem for people who need the reminder. I don't need to like every poem but I do want to know more about this one. I'm hoping those who appreciate this poem can enlighten me by explaining what they see in it so I can appreciate it more too. In my trying to say what I've said about it, I'm already feeling a bit more able to value it more than I have.


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## luckyscars (Dec 9, 2020)

The dichotomy between abstract/concrete image-building as a litmus of good/bad writing is overrated, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with abstract writing so long as it isn't being used as a crutch for laziness. 

The reason a sentence like "He got angry" isn't generally considered to be as good as "His cheeks flushed, as though scalded" is because anger is a nuanced emotion. There are different levels of anger and very different ways of expressing it. Nuance requires concrete language. So, to say, 'he got angry' can come across as skipping over an opportunity to make the reader see something that is real and also matters. It FEELS like cutting a corner.

The Frost poem, I don't agree that it's a problem. Is it a great poem? No, not really, but it's problem is not that it's abstract. If anything, its abstractness makes it kind of attractive, makes it almost intriguing. It reminds me of something from Alice In Wonderland. Moreover, I don't think concreteness is Frost's intent here, I don't think literal meaning is. I think his intent is to almost hypnotize through rhythm and repetition and create what is almost a riddle, a feeling rather than a meaning. It has a 'voice' that makes me think of a nihilistic Cheshire Cat.

Not to say that concrete imagery isn't *better* as a kind of default, only that there is a place for the more abstract, even the nonsensical. On the subject of Alice In Wonderland...how about Jabberwocky? Is this a good poem? Or is it godawful?



> ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
> 
> All mimsy were the borogoves,
> 
> ...




More specifically, is this a better poem or a worse poem than Tay Bridge? It's could be said to be less concrete. It certainly has arguably "less meaning", being that much of these words aren't even words at all. But, I would argue it's a more meaningful poem because it's meaning exists in the _sounds _of its diction rather than the semantics.


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## BornForBurning (Dec 9, 2020)

> But, I would argue it's a more meaningful poem because it's meaning exists in the _sounds of its diction rather than the semantics._


Here's a phrase I just coined. _Emergent semantics. _I've always loved this poem, ever since I was a little kid. Why? The 'nonsense' is incredibly evocative. Due to unconscious associations we make between certain verbalizations and images/events/assorted _stuff _in the real world, and the context provided by the words we _do _understand, these nonsense phrases actually end up having intense meaning. In that first verse, I see murk, disease, filth...it's vivid. Ancient, primal caveman poetry. Language and meaning emerging from the mists of primitive animalism.


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## Pamelyn Casto (Dec 9, 2020)

BornForBurning said:


> Here's a phrase I just coined. _Emergent semantics. _I've always loved this poem, ever since I was a little kid. Why? The 'nonsense' is incredibly evocative. Due to unconscious associations we make between certain verbalizations and images/events/assorted _stuff _in the real world, and the context provided by the words we _do _understand, these nonsense phrases actually end up having intense meaning. In that first verse, I see murk, disease, filth...it's vivid. Ancient, primal caveman poetry. Language and meaning emerging from the mists of primitive animalism.



*** Interesting thoughts, BornForBurning. The lines that have always frightened me most are these two:

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

I never want run into a Jubjub bird and I'm afraid I'd do more than _shun_ that frumious Bandersnatch! It's amazing how these made-up words can have such an effect. But I guess all words were made up at some point so maybe the talent lies in being able to retrieve a few fresh and disturbing ones from that first verse vat you speak of. The two the lines I show above have intense meaning for me. But I can't tell anyone, even myself, what that meaning might be and can't explain why it's scary. But it is.


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