Is this poem bad?

[DesEsseintes]

Thank you all for your thoughts.

I'm not quite sure what I think about it. Certainly it's a simple poem--the meter is very strong and very regular (I think there's only one trochee substitution in the whole poem) and the language is very basic (of the 80 words in the poem, 11 are disyllabic and only one is trisyllabic). That simplicity is part of the reason it's easy to parody (also that it, or at least the first couplet, is so well-known), but I don't know that I think the simplicity alone makes it bad. It actually fits the theme of the poem, which is artless simplicity and an almost childlike religious faith.

The imagery seems trite, but that could just be due to the poem's popularity. I remember the first time I saw High Noon I thought it horribly clichéd, but it was sufficiently novel at the time that Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo as a kind of refutation of the idea behind High Noon. So the imagery may be why we (readers in the 21st century) find it not compelling, but that doesn't mean that the poem is bad (meaning badly written or constructed).

Is it that the theme is simple? Is the theme simple?

I don't know.

Anyway, thanks for your ideas.

Interesting thoughts. But I don't think metrical or verbal simplicity necessarily makes for a bad poem. William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience are equally 'simple', yet far more profound.

'To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.'

Shakespeare and Donne's sonnets are also often metrically straightforward. And Milton's 'On His Blindness', one of the most powerful poems I know, also meditates on precisely this idea of child-like devotion when faced with an all powerful God. None feels nearly so bereft of feeling as this. But it's all, when it comes down to it, personal, I suppose.

 

[Tzara]

Here's another one: Is this poem bad?

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
..............................Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
..............................Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
..............................In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
..............................Is immortal diamond.



Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

 

[Tzara]

Interesting thoughts. But I don't think metrical or verbal simplicity necessarily makes for a bad poem. William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience are equally 'simple', yet far more profound.

'To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.'

Shakespeare and Donne's sonnets are also often metrically straightforward. And Milton's 'On His Blindness', one of the most powerful poems I know, also meditates on precisely this idea of child-like devotion when faced with an all powerful God. None feels nearly so bereft of feeling as this. But it's all, when it comes down to it, personal, I suppose.

Blake was someone I was thinking of when I started this. Not that he's bad, which he's not, but why is Kilmer thought of as bad and not Blake (or not Wordsworth, whom I dislike and who is also easy to parody)?

 

[pensivepoet]

Tzara~sorry for kinda making a travis-ty of your thread.
And in case kilmer is your great grandfather, i really liked the poem.

 

[Magnetron]

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
..............................Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
..............................Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
..............................In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
..............................Is immortal diamond.



Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

This evokes feelings similar to the one's I experienced when reading Stephen King's Duma Key, in which nothing eventful happened in the first 75 page, to which I bothered not to finish.

 

[Angeline]

Now here is an interesting comparison. Kilmer and William Carlos Williams were contemporaries, born three years apart and pretty close geographically, too. Williams lived a lot longer than Kilmer, but the volume of poetry that included "Trees" was published only six year before Williams' seminal volume Spring and All, which includes "The Red Wheelbarrow." The only thing they appear to have in common as poets is simplicity, but it is a key feature in the (very different) way they write.

I hope I'm not supposed to have a point lol. I just find this interesting.

 

[Trixareforkids]

I hope I'm not supposed to have a point lol. I just find this interesting.

I resemble that remark.

 

[Tsotha]

...is what this thread made me think.

The poem on the OP is not half as "bad" as most I've read here on Lit.

 

[Angeline]

I resemble that remark.

Good. I hate being alone in my pointlessness.

...is what this thread made me think.

The poem on the OP is not half as "bad" as most I've read here on Lit.

LOL! The poor poem was all but taken out and shot.

 

[twelveoone]

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
..............................Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
..............................Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
..............................In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
..............................Is immortal diamond.



Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

imagine Heath Ledger reading...

Now imagine Christopher Walken reading "Trees"

You may also consider the fact that Wordsworth is not parodied, because nobody would know what you were doing. "Trees" perfect. Some Poe, Blake, Coleridge even Longfellow, etc. It does have something to do with a perceived rhythm of something that is familiar, i.e. you will see more parodies of The Charge of the Light Brigade, than The Charge of the Heavy Brigade...

largely because the Tuba of God blows in mysterious ways

 

[Tsotha]

You suck, Kilmer
don't quit your day job

'nough said

 

[twelveoone]

You suck, Kilmer
don't quit your day job

'nough said

Not so fast,

Kilmer was a tree surgeon

 

[twelveoone]

for me, it feels 'of an era', sing-songy in delivery that can detract from imagery that wouldn't otherwise feel so twee. i like the raised leafy arms, the nest of robins, the living intimately with rain... but i found it took time for me to be able to appreciate them past the form-packaging.

ultimately, i find the poem resides entirely within the first two lines, no expansion required in my mind. but then joyce kilmer's the famous poet and we are but mere scribblers in the dust....

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
rhyme scheme see/tree
A certain amount of parallel sound structure
Long vowels:
allowing for the fact I read this as long A
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Semantically starts with a negative "never see" to accentuate the positive "lovely as a tree."
The long E pattern see lovely tree with the end rhyme loads "tree"
Context in the time, what tree? Me being me would be tempted to be flip and say he was screaming because he saw a sycamore. But Kilmer probably knew one tree from another, whereas we don't. We really don't have much use for trees, get our fruit from bags, have air conditioning, etc. Still it is a generic tree, isn't it? I will bet you Kilmer knew the bible. I think a tree grew in the bible, long before it grew in Brooklyn. Yeh, that one. This is a reverent poem about knowing your place. Kilmer was not that bad in the context of the time.
Sonically I would have loaded it with an extra I
A sight as lovely as a tree

Po-Em just sounds stupid to me. But then the bullshit we write is going sound pret-ty fuckin dumb a hundred years hence. Well maybe yours, mine will sound pretty cool, 'cause I have a time machine, I checked.

 

[bogusagain]

Blake was someone I was thinking of when I started this. Not that he's bad, which he's not, but why is Kilmer thought of as bad and not Blake (or not Wordsworth, whom I dislike and who is also easy to parody)?

Blake was a rebel (though not a very brave one), a Bonapartist, when people thought Bonaparte would free them from monarchial tyranny. He was anti-establishment with visions and many people thought he was mad. It sort of gives him a street credibility even though the establishment has assimilated his work and bastions of privilege like Eton school sing his poem Jerusalem, which was a rage against the world as it was and bastions of privilege like Eton.

Wordsworth was a romantic and a bit of a literary rebel, wanting to write poetry about common things in common language. All makes for credibility, even if their work loses power over time, it is remembered as once being new and breaking new ground. When he wrote Daffodils, it was a case of what idiot would write a poem about daffodils? The common subject was new.

 

[Tsotha]

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
rhyme scheme see/tree
A certain amount of parallel sound structure
Long vowels:
allowing for the fact I read this as long A
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Semantically starts with a negative "never see" to accentuate the positive "lovely as a tree."
The long E pattern see lovely tree with the end rhyme loads "tree"
Context in the time, what tree? Me being me would be tempted to be flip and say he was screaming because he saw a sycamore. But Kilmer probably knew one tree from another, whereas we don't. We really don't have much use for trees, get our fruit from bags, have air conditioning, etc. Still it is a generic tree, isn't it? I will bet you Kilmer knew the bible. I think a tree grew in the bible, long before it grew in Brooklyn. Yeh, that one. This is a reverent poem about knowing your place. Kilmer was not that bad in the context of the time.
Sonically I would have loaded it with an extra I
A sight as lovely as a tree

Po-Em just sounds stupid to me. But then the bullshit we write is going sound pret-ty fuckin dumb a hundred years hence. Well maybe yours, mine will sound pretty cool, 'cause I have a time machine, I checked.

Thank you for this; I was getting all fidgety, like I should get off my ass and say something. Crisis averted.

 

[greenmountaineer]

This thread is turning into a mini-survey course about poetry's development from the beginning of the 19th century into its modern phase a century later.

It's been interesting reading thus far. I'm surprised Beaudelaire and the other French Symbolists haven't been mentioned. I think they laid the groundwork for breaking the mold.

Tzara, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're "going Catholic" on us with your selection of Kilmer and Hopkins, convert and Jesuit, respectively. I haven't read much of Hopkins, but I think Pied Beauty was novel and interesting in that challenged what a sonnet should be, and I think has merit whether or not you agree with its theme.

 

[Tzara]

This thread is turning into a mini-survey course about poetry's development from the beginning of the 19th century into its modern phase a century later.

It's been interesting reading thus far. I'm surprised Beaudelaire and the other French Symbolists haven't been mentioned. I think they laid the groundwork for breaking the mold.

Tzara, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're "going Catholic" on us with your selection of Kilmer and Hopkins, convert and Jesuit, respectively. I haven't read much of Hopkins, but I think Pied Beauty was novel and interesting in that challenged what a sonnet should be, and I think has merit whether or not you agree with its theme.

The Catholic theme is inadvertent. I was reacting to a passage by Ted Kooser where he was comparing a poem (actually a line in a poem) by Swinburne to one by Hopkins, both of which made extensive use of alliteration. He dismissed the Swinburne as shallow and clever but praised Hopkins.

That got me thinking about how we (either in general or individually) assign the labels "good" and "bad" to poets and particular poems. The first "bad" poem that came to mind was "Trees." I figured most of us would label it as "bad," but I was curious why--what about it makes it bad.

The Hopkins poem is more difficult, and perhaps a matter of taste. While I quite admire "Pied Beauty," I find some of his poems so jam-packed with stylistic gimcrack that they seem like self-parody.

 

[twelveoone]

for me, it feels 'of an era', sing-songy in delivery that can detract from imagery that wouldn't otherwise feel so twee. i like the raised leafy arms, the nest of robins, the living intimately with rain... but i found it took time for me to be able to appreciate them past the form-packaging.

ultimately, i find the poem resides entirely within the first two lines, no expansion required in my mind. but then joyce kilmer's the famous poet and we are but mere scribblers in the dust....

btw, this is why Du bist Du, nicht Sie

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

As is, it comes off as sarcastic

everything else works as something counterproductive (almost self parody) until the final two lines

the change I made in line defers the conclusion,
A sight as lovely as a tree
shifts focus more firmly on to the tree
until
Poems are made by fools like me,

And added benefit to my change is it increases the twee factor, which if later sarcasm where to be introduced...via sumac...I was almost tempted to rewrite...see that is what poetry is all about...
Fucking Inspiration!

 

[twelveoone]

The Catholic theme is inadvertent. I was reacting to a passage by Ted Kooser where he was comparing a poem (actually a line in a poem) by Swinburne to one by Hopkins, both of which made extensive use of alliteration. He dismissed the Swinburne as shallow and clever but praised Hopkins.

That got me thinking about how we (either in general or individually) assign the labels "good" and "bad" to poets and particular poems. The first "bad" poem that came to mind was "Trees." I figured most of us would label it as "bad," but I was curious why--what about it makes it bad.

The Hopkins poem is more difficult, and perhaps a matter of taste. While I quite admire "Pied Beauty," I find some of his poems so jam-packed with stylistic gimcrack that they seem like self-parody.

Do tell. Would really love to see this, at least the two lines.

Also what is "stylistic gimcrack" and is it smokeable?

BTW in general labels are more likely assumed then self assigned, i.e. ABC say thereforth it must be. Musten (sic) it.

Now, why is "Trees" a bad poem? The end is directly predicted by the beginning, asks no questions, in other words does not involve the reader to any significant degree? i.e. simplistic, straight line?

 

[Trixareforkids]

...I was almost tempted to rewrite...see that is what poetry is all about...
Fucking Inspiration!

As much inspiration as I've gotten from other poets, I'm appalled I didn't beat you to that line!

 

[Tsotha]

A very long time ago, I came across a small book of poetry. The title was Up the Line to Death. It was an anthology of poems written by the soldiers of the US, Britain, Canada, and Australia during WW1. Most were better than the tree poem, if only by a little. All were stark, realistic, and haunting. Most of the poets chosen for the book did not survive the war. Kilmer is not actually in the book, probably because he was an established poet before the war and the tree poem was published in 1913. He was killed on the battlefield in 1918.

Even so, I connect Kilmer and the other war poets.

What does it matter whether they died in a war or from slipping in the bathroom and hitting their heads on the bathtub?

It's an appalling piece of trite sentimentalism, of course.

It could be argued that any poetry is trite sentimentalism.

 

[Tsotha]

Five thousand years ago, just being able to write something down made you something special. Now you need to work-work-work and get the right cards (a set of preconditions) to achieve the rank of worthless worm.

There is a tree of unique things to be thought / felt / said. As humanity progresses through the centuries, we move from the trunk up to the branches. Our possibilities expand, balancing over what came before. This is what I believe. However, we are far too many, now. Too many monkeys for one tree. In the process of traversing this universe of possibilities, the same things get said over and over again, in slightly different ways. (Example given, someone must be writing this exact same thing with but a few hours apart from me.) So, unless you adhere to the idea that each person is a little special gem whose words are important, what you have is a lot of irrelevant crap to wallow through.

I've asked this question before, here. As far as I can tell, there is no objective "good" or "bad" in poetry. You can only measure success - whether one manages to convince others that what is written there is "good". So Kilmer is "bad" because nobody gives a crap about his tree. Bad salesman. Alternatively you could ask why the poem was written, and whether its intention was achieved. (Not that we can actually get the answer to those questions.)

 

[twelveoone]

Five thousand years ago, just being able to write something down made you something special. Now you need to work-work-work and get the right cards (a set of preconditions) to achieve the rank of worthless worm.

There is a tree of unique things to be thought / felt / said. As humanity progresses through the centuries, we move from the trunk up to the branches. Our possibilities expand, balancing over what came before. This is what I believe. However, we are far too many, now. Too many monkeys for one tree. In the process of traversing this universe of possibilities, the same things get said over and over again, in slightly different ways. (Example given, someone must be writing this exact same thing with but a few hours apart from me.) So, unless you adhere to the idea that each person is a little special gem whose words are important, what you have is a lot of irrelevant crap to wallow through.

I've asked this question before, here. As far as I can tell, there is no objective "good" or "bad" in poetry. You can only measure success - whether one manages to convince others that what is written there is "good". So Kilmer is "bad" because nobody gives a crap about his tree. Bad salesman. Alternatively you could ask why the poem was written, and whether its intention was achieved. (Not that we can actually get the answer to those questions.)

why that is uncanny, I was...

for trees are like a bar
where dogs leave their calling cards
like the businessmen they really are
...and OMG fucking monkeys!!!?!
(it was a banyan, the bondage tree
of all the gods, too numerous to name here)
suffice to say the dogs care

thirdly, butters answered that question, I elaborated
with the emphasis on borated

 

[twelveoone]

What does it matter whether they died in a war or from slipping in the bathroom and hitting their heads on the bathtub?



It could be argued that any poetry is trite sentimentalism.

I lump myself in with the "hitting their heads on the bathtubs" poets
our poems may be trite but NOT sentimental

 

[Tsotha]

I lump myself in with the "hitting their heads on the bathtubs" poets
our poems may be trite but NOT sentimental

If not some form of sentimentalism, what else leads a poet to write, then?