Favourite McGonagall poem?

Although it's hard to select a single gem from the cornucopia of William McGonagall, I confess a great fondness for The Famous Tay Whale. Plus, it's seasonal!

'Twas in the month of December, and in the year 1883,
That a monster whale came to Dundee,
Resolved for a few days to sport and play,
And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay...

What poem (or portion of a poem) do you like best?

Edited to insert, crowbar-style, a touchstone reference to the man himself

"World's Worst Poet"? How can you say that? He is justly famed as the world's best bad poet!

I'll have to ponder to come up with a favorite. :-)

>2 "World's best bad poet"? Well, we know there are those who make that claim, but we incline to ascribe that to mere Brit chauvinism. The title has been held since 1876 by Julia Moore, who is so far ahead of MacGonagall it reminds us of the first race for America's cup--"Your Majesty, there is no second." Mac had to peddle his poems door to door. Julia's very first collection was a best-seller.

Here's her Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_A._Moore

chamekke,
I just can't chose a favorite. If forced, I'd probably have to go along with Nash (Everybody Ought to Know) and pick "The Tay Bridge Disaster." But there's "The Death of Prince Leopold" (who "had also a particular liking for his child") and so many other gems.

Thanks for the URL. When will that book be available in the US, darn it? I want to read the play!

Fogies,
I'm as patriotic as the next (grin), but IMO Moore isn't even in the same league with McGonagall.

I stand ready to be convinced, if there are gems of hers that I haven't read. On the Wiki page the only poem that made me laugh was Twain's. I had read a couple of her poems before, and sampled a few more online. Some even reminded me a little of McGonagall's work, but without the ragged sweep of his "mighty line" and without the wonderful rhymes. Couplets at 20 paces? :-) Or perhaps Moore should have her own group, or at least a new topic.

>3 re: Julia A. Moore

I have not only heard of Julia A. Moore, but have even managed to read some of her poetry. It's arguably true that she's as bad as William McGonagall, but she's nowhere near as funny. (I'm willing to be convinced otherwise - quote me some selections!)

Thanks for the Wiki reminder. Here is W.McG.'s entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Topaz_McGonagall

Here's a pop-culture tidbit from Wikipedia: "In the Harry Potter books, author J.K. Rowling chose the surname of the Professor of Transfiguration, Minerva McGonagall, because she had heard of McGonagall and loved the surname." Hadn't known that before. Take that, Potter fans!

Hey, wait a minute. I'm a Potter fan. :-) And I've always had an extra fondness for Minerva McGonagall because of her name. I keep waiting for her to recite poetry. :-)

For many long years the Order of the Phoenix battled He Who Must Not Be Named,
And many an innocent witch and wizard, and a goblin here and there, was killed or sometimes horribly maimed.

(Apologies - best I can do on the spur of the moment.)

myshelves, our postings re: Julia A. Moore must have crossed in the ether...

IMO, the laurel for Best Worst Poet must go to the person whose poetry is most risible when read out loud. This is where McGonagall really excels. It's one thing to read eight stanzas on the page, but it's entirely another to have them declaimed aloud, when you can enjoy the delightful effect of gradually escalating awfulness.

> 6

No worries, myshelves, I'm a Potter fan too. (And I think Maggie Smith would do a lovely job of reciting McGonagall's poetry, with her elegant Scots accent.)

For many long years the Order of the Phoenix battled He Who Must Not Be Named,
And many an innocent witch and wizard, and a goblin here and there, was killed or sometimes horribly maimed.

(Apologies - best I can do on the spur of the moment.)

My goodness, that's marvellous. I wonder whether we should organise a McGonagall-Potter round robin, and if so, what the subject might be? McGonagall would have been quite moved by the pitiable situation of house elves, don't you think? Or any Potterian battle in which someone gets killed, for that perfect touch of bathos.

Potter:
You'd have to be careful about Spoilers. If someone let slip that _____, or even _____, is dead, you'd be roasted by flames.

Btw, thanks to your URL, I just got my Gem of the Day - - - "A Tale of The Sea." Interesting. I'm no expert on such things, but I did recently read The Custom of the Sea. I don't think you get very far cutting someone's throat hours or days after death to drink his blood. No blood pressure, right? McGonagall's error in pursuit of his muse, or was the sailor lying? Quite likely the latter; they probably killed "poor Jim."

(My touchstone for the Neil Hanson book vanished. But it is here when I click edit. Odd.)

Potter:
You'd have to be careful about Spoilers. If someone let slip that _____, or even _____, is dead, you'd be roasted by flames.

And let's not even think about what happens to poor _____!

I don't think you get very far cutting someone's throat hours or days after death to drink his blood. No blood pressure, right? McGonagall's error in pursuit of his muse, or was the sailor lying? Quite likely the latter; they probably killed "poor Jim."

I imagine you're right. McGonagall was tremendously fond of providing exact data whenever he could, but surely he must have relied mainly on hearsay. As The Guardian's article Bard of the Silv'ry Tay says: "At a time when many listening to his recitals would have been unable to read, McGonagall acted as a poet of reportage, always mindful of the importance of basic information." Take, for example, the "Famous Tay Whale", one of the more measurement-heavy poems:

So Mr John Wood has bought it for two hundred and twenty-six pound,
And has brought it to Dundee all safe and all sound;
Which measures 40 feet in length from the snout to the tail,
So I advise the people far and near to see it without fail.

Then hurrah! for the mighty monster whale,
Which has got 17 feet 4 inches from tip to tip of a tail!
Which can be seen for a sixpence or a shilling,
That is to say, if the people all are willing.

A man who loves precision!

P.S. I just discovered a Flash animation of this poem on Gord Bambrick's superb "The Real McGonagall" site. There are six such poems!

Well, if being unintentionally funny is your criterion, Mac gets the palm, sure. Moore has flashes of preposterous infelicity that are as funny as the end-of-column squibs in The New Yorker. Mac's badness runs deeper than that, to the point where it's not wise to read him in a quiet reading-room. It's like watching a movie where a sputtering fuse is slowly burning toward a powder-barrel. You can feel the explosion of laughter coming well in advance. With Moore it's more typical to stop and say, "What the...?" and only then be moved to laughter.

But the claim was best bad poet, not funniest, and you'll never convince the Fogies that either MacGonagall or Moore would have accepted your criterion. Both of them were professional poets, remember, and both considered themselves fully qualified in their craft. The Fogies' criterion is the one made famous by T.S. Eliot, making a pot of money by writing poetry. If you'll recall, it was that well-known fact about him that gave him an off-stage cameo role in Catch-22.

To turn the topic inside-out, there's a very funny collection of the worst verse by people supposed to be genuinely competent poets, called The Stuffed Owl. If you run across it, buy it. Don't read it at a sitting; that would be like wolfing a box of candy. Dip into it now and then, and you'll get maybe a year's worth of occasional laughs.

Fogies said: To turn the topic inside-out, there's a very funny collection of the worst verse by people supposed to be genuinely competent poets, called The Stuffed Owl. If you run across it, buy it. Don't read it at a sitting; that would be like wolfing a box of candy. Dip into it now and then, and you'll get maybe a year's worth of occasional laughs.

Thanks for the rec of The Stuffed Owl. It sounds perversely delightful. My local library has a copy, so I've just put an online hold on it. A sugarplum to enjoy over the holidays!

Also, the "best bad poet" is myshelves's (or is that myshelves') epithet, not mine, so I will leave it to him/her to defend. I am using the flagrantly hyperbolic "world's worst poet" in the group name, mainly to attract passersby and solicit recommendations of other bad poetry.

(Actually I agree with Mr. Bambrick that McG. was a surprisingly deft (not daft) old poet and that he may have been intentionally comic in his poetry and live performances. But that may be a discussion for another thread.)

Fogies,

The Owl has long been perched near the Nash book, the Brand X Anthology, etc.

". . . you'll never convince the Fogies that either MacGonagall or Moore would have accepted your criterion." (I don't know HTML, so no italics.)

I don't see your point. I don't think that either would wish to lay claim to being a bad poet, never mind to being an amusingly bad poet. Their intent or acceptance seems irrelevant.

The more of Moore I read, the more I'm stopped in my tracks by her atrocious grammar. Anyone who gets my vote for "best" worst poet needs to have some notion of singular & plural, present & past tense, etc.
I don't know if those errors are considered to be part of her charm, but. . . .

The humor in McG's poetry, as I see it, comes largely from his descent from the "sublime" to flat declarative statement, or to trifling detail, in the blink of an eye. Of course, it also helps that he agrees with Tom Lehrer (singing of protest songs) that it "don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line."
As chamekke says, Bambrick makes a good argument that McG's intent also may have been satirical.

chamekke,

Great stuff you are finding! My antique computer might take until 2007 to load those animations, so I'll have to wait until I'm visiting a friend with a faster connection & more memory.

You are seeking more bad poetry? Have you read "Peter Bell"? If not, your quest can be fulfilled at
www.bartleby.com/145/ww141.html I'm not sure that it gets any worse. :-)

When I read your Whale favorite, I was struck by the "brave fishermen" line. Thought "What does he mean by that?" Bambrick's contention certainly would explain it. I wonder how the odd line I mentioned about Leopold having "a particular liking for his child" would fit in to the theory? Have to find out a bit more about Leopold and family, I guess.

myshelves and chamekke both accept the possibility that Mac's intent may have been satirical, and that his method was the absurd injection of the mundane into the sublime. Well, if so, both of you ought to get into At Swim-two-birds. There you will see how a genius does that. The book seems to go slowly at first, but once you catch on to what he's doing and how he does it, you will laugh so hard your face aches.

Fogies, I do already have At Swim-two-birds, and I agree with you - it is a work of genius. There are so many things to love about it... I'm especially fond of the bits concerning Suibhne Gealt (mad Sweeney). Obviously it's time to go back and re-read it.

Edited to remove embarrassing reference to wrong book (The Third Policeman). In own defence, have not had my morning coffee yet.

chamekke

"Obviously it's time to go back and re-read it."

When you do, don't forget:

A pint of plain is your only man.

A pint of plain is your only man.

"When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan..."

Hey, "A Pint of Plain" would make a pretty decent name for a Flann O'Brien/Brian O'Nolan/Myles na gCopaleen group, don't you think?

(Of course, one could spend many happy hours just thinking up names for a F.O'B/B. O'N./M. na gC. group...)

'Hey, "A Pint of Plain" would make a pretty decent name for a Flann O'Brien/Brian O'Nolan/Myles na gCopaleen group, don't you think?'

We bethought us of "The Plain People of Ireland" before we realized it makes a pun in this context.

"Ars est celare artem" muttered Trellis, doubtful that he had made a pun.

>13 myshelves

You don't have to know much HTML to do italics & boldface. Just bung in the marker i for italic and b for boldface. Put them immediately before the passage you want to mark. Immedately at the end of that passage turn off italics or bold with /i or /b. It's important to remember that, because italics will go on for your whole post if you don't, and can even spill over into the next post.

Now here's the trick to activate your i and b markers: immediately precede the marker with the left angle-bracket "egg without the spaces we inserted to deactivate the markers here.

Testing.

I see. Or I think I see. Thanks!

I would put Sarah Binks and its author Paul Hiebert forward as an example of really outstanding bad poetry. It's a satire on literary biographies and in order to have some works by the fictitious Sarah (the "Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan") to rave about, Hiebert invents quantities of poetry that is bad in all sorts of ways. Truly a treat for fans of McGonagall.

I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favourite McGonagall line. They're all of such uniform quality! But the whale is not the only poem that ends with a mention of the admission fees, and I always enjoy that bit.

I live in a town whose name is {mumble}, and our free neighbourhood newspaper sometimes publishes amateur poetic efforts. Several of them are by a lady whose subject matter veers so wildly between the bathetic and the absurd, and whose rhythm/metre/scansion is so galumphingly erratic, my husband and I speculate that she may actually be the missing heir of McGonagall. We look forward keenly to every new effort, I can tell you.

Sadly, I cannot publish either her name or samples of her poetry, since the worst thing of all - a thing even more awful than her verse - is the possibility of hurting her feelings via Internet gossip.

(Her poetry really is wonderful stuff, though!)