Friday, May 16, 2008

No poetry please

The world's worst poet's works are going under the hammer, not to be destoryed, (a ha!), but to be aunctioned off. Re-reading McGonagall's truly epic piece "The Tay Bridge Disaster" it's not hard to see why he was regarded as the worst. The whole thing is a mess of forced rhymes and uneven meters, but the final few lines really are a piece of terrible genius:

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.

The lines about buttresses and building houses strong are so unpoetic and more like an acedemic paper on construction techniques.

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