Writing very bad poetry requires talent. It helps to have a wooden ear for words, a penchant for sinking into a mire of sentimentality, and an enviable confidence that allows one to write despite absolutely appalling incompetence. The 131 poems collected in this first-of-its-kind anthology are so glaringly awful that they embody a kind of genius. From Fred Emerson Brooks' "The Stuttering Lover" to Matthew Green's "The Spleen" to Georgia Bailey Parrington's misguided "An Elegy to a Dissected Puppy", they mangle meter, run rampant over rhyme, and bludgeon us into insensibility with their grandiosity, anticlimax, and malapropism. Guaranteed to move even the most stoic reader to tears (of laughter),Very Bad Poetryis sure to become a favorite of the poetically inclined (and disinclined).

Kathryn and Ross Petras are a brother and sister team who wrote The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said. They live in New York City.

Introduction
John Armstrong (1709-1779)	p. 3
The Art of Preserving Health	p. 3
Alfred Austin (1835-1913)	p. 4
The Human Tragedy	p. 5
Go Away, Death!	p. 6
The Wind Speaks	p. 6
T. Baker (fl. 1850s)	p. 7
The Steam Engine	p. 7
The Most Convoluted Syntax: On a Procession with the Prince of Wales	p. 8
Samuel Bentley (fl. 1760s)	p. 9
The River Dove: A Lyric Pastoral	p. 9
Mrs. Marion Albina Bigelow (fl. 1850s)	p. 10
Children Disinterred	p. 10
Two Smothered Children	p. 11
E. E. Bradford (1860-1944)	p. 11
The Tree of Knowledge	p. 12
His Mother Drinks	p. 13
The Most Lurid Account of Tragedy: Calamity in London; Family of Ten Burned to Death	p. 14
Colonel I. J. Brittain (fl. 1918)	p. 15
The Tragedy of Ida Ball Warren and Samuel Christie	p. 15
Fred Emerson Brooks (fl. 1894)	p. 17
The Stuttering Lover	p. 17
Old Eagle	p. 18
Solyman Brown (1790-1876)	p. 19
The Dentologia - A Poem on the Diseases of the Teeth	p. 19
T. E. Brown (1830-1897)	p. 20
Between Our Folding Lips	p. 20
Wallace Bruce (fl. 1907)	p. 21
A Holland Brick	p. 21
H. C. Bunner (fl. 1880s)	p. 22
In School House: A Real Romance	p. 22
Their Wedding Journey	p. 23
J. Gordon Coogler (1865-1901)	p. 24
Alas Carolina	p. 24
The Lover's Return on a Bicycle	p. 25
[Untitled]	p. 26
How Strange Are Dreams!	p. 26
Byron	p. 26
A Pretty Girl	p. 27
More Care for the Neck Than for the Intellect	p. 27
God Correctly Understood	p. 27
The Poem Showing the Most Mathematical Genius: The Round of the Clock	p. 28
Eliza Cook (1818-1889)	p. 29
The Surgeon's Knife	p. 29
The Carrion Crow	p. 30
Lines Among the Leaves	p. 30
Song of the Sea Weed	p. 31
A Pathetic Lament	p. 31
Lillian E. Curtis (fl. 1870s)	p. 32
Only One Eye	p. 33
The Potato	p. 34
The Two Bears	p. 35
J. P. Dunn (fl. 1917)	p. 36
Kansas	p. 36
An Ode to Governor Capper	p. 37
Edward Edwin Foot (fl. 1867)	p. 38
Jane Hollybrand; or, Virtue Rewarded	p. 38
The Homeward-Bound Passenger Ship	p. 39
[Untitled]	p. 39
The Worst Baby Talk Poem: The New Baby	p. 40
Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)	p. 41
"Hullo!"	p. 41
James Grainger (1721-1767)	p. 42
The Sugar Cane	p. 43
Bryan and Pereene: A West Indian Ballad	p. 44
Matthew Green (1697-1737)	p. 45
The Spleen	p. 46
Joseph Gwyer (1835-?)	p. 46
To Alfred Gwyer	p. 47
Ode on the Visit of the Shah of Persia	p. 47
On the Death of the Duke of Clarence	p. 47
On the Funeral of Dr. Livingston	p. 48
Nancy Luce (fl. 1860s)	p. 48
Poor Little Hearts	p. 48
William McGonagall (1830-1902)	p. 50
The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay	p. 51
The Tay Bridge Disaster	p. 51
An Address to the New Tay Bridge	p. 52
A Tale of the Sea	p. 53
The Death of Lord and Lady Dalhousie	p. 54
The Funeral of the German Emperor	p. 55
The Famous Tay Whale	p. 56
The Late Sir John Ogilvy	p. 57
The Royal Review	p. 57
The Sprig of Moss	p. 58
The Clepington Catastrophe	p. 58
The Most Anticlimactic Poem: The Grand Rapids Cricket Club	p. 59
James McIntyre (1827-1906)	p. 60
Ode on the Mammoth Cheese	p. 60
Oxford Cheese Ode	p. 62
Prophecy of a Ten Ton Cheese	p. 62
Disaster to Steamer Victoria at London	p. 63
Potato Bug Exterminators	p. 64
Wooden Leg	p. 64
George Meredith (1828-1909)	p. 66
The Empty Purse: A Sermon to Our Later Prodigal Son	p. 66
Owen Meredith (Robert Lytton, Earl of Lytton) (1831-1891)	p. 67
Going Back Again	p. 67
The Vampyre	p. 68
Midges	p. 69
The Worst Attempts at Rhymes by Very Bad Poets: In a Book-store	p. 71
The Worst Attempts at Rhymes by Very Bad Poets: The Light-Bearer of Liberty	p. 71
The Worst Attempts at Rhymes by Very Bad Poets: Indian Corn	p. 71
James Milligan (fl. 1800s)	p. 72
The Science of Geology	p. 72
Bertha Moore (fl. 1890s)	p. 72
A Child's Thought	p. 73
Julia A. Moore (1847-1920)	p. 74
Hattie House	p. 75
Little Libbie	p. 75
Roll On, Time, Roll On	p. 76
Croquet by Moonlight	p. 76
Ashtabula Disaster	p. 77
Hiram Helsel	p. 78
The Brave Page Boys	p. 78
The Author's Early Life	p. 79
Edward Newman (fl. 1840)	p. 79
Earwigs	p. 79
Georgia Bailey Parrington (fl. 1907)	p. 80
An Elegy to a Dissected Puppy	p. 80
Robert Peter (fl. 1800s)	p. 81
On Time, Death, and Eternity	p. 81
The Worst Tribute to a Great Poet: English Poets	p. 81
Mattie J. Peterson (1866-1947) or (1866-1906)	p. 82
I Kissed Pa Twice after His Death	p. 82
The Old Homestead	p. 83
James Henry Powell (fl. 1850)	p. 84
Lines Written for a Friend on the Death of His Brother, Caused by a Railway Train Running over Him Whilst He Was in a State of Inebriation	p. 84
James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)	p. 85
The Smitten Purist: And the Charming Miss Smith's Effect upon Him	p. 85
The Happy Little Cripple	p. 86
A Dubious "Old Kriss"	p. 87
Amanda McKittrick Ros (1860-1939)	p. 88
On Visiting Westminster Abbey	p. 89
A Little Belgian Orphan	p. 90
Thoughts	p. 92
The End of "Pain"	p. 93
The Old Home	p. 93
On a Girl Who Took Action for Breach of Promise	p. 95
I Love to See a Lady Nice and Natural at Any Price	p. 95
When Bad Poems Happen to Good Poets: The Thorn	p. 97
Francis Saltus Saltus (1849-1889)	p. 98
Mothers	p. 98
Posthumous Revenge	p. 99
The Kiss	p. 100
The Masters	p. 101
Two Loves Found Refuge: A Mood of Madness	p. 101
George Robert Sims (1847-?)	p. 102
Beauty and the Beast	p. 102
Slocum Slugs, Esq. (fl. 1857)	p. 103
I Saw Her in Cabbage Time: A Dutch Melody	p. 103
William B. Tappan (1794-1849)	p. 104
Obey Your Parents	p. 105
Song of the Three Hundred Thousand Drunkards in the United States	p. 106
The Last Drunkard	p. 106
Rev. Samuel Wesley, Sr. (1660-1735)	p. 107
On Two Souldiers Killing One Another for a Groat	p. 107
A Pindaricque on the Grunting of a Hog	p. 108
Cornelius Whur (1782-1853)	p. 109
The Armless Artist	p. 109
The Unfortunate Gentleman	p. 110
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)	p. 110
Drops of Water	p. 111
Come Back Clean	p. 112
George Wither (1588-1667)	p. 112
A Love Sonnet	p. 113
Poems by Unknown Authors	p. 114
Ode to a Ditch	p. 114
My Last Tooth	p. 115
[Untitled]	p. 116
Battles of Joshua	p. 116
[Untitled]	p. 118
Independence Day	p. 120
The Worst Poem Ever Written in the English Language: A Tragedy	p. 123
Acknowledgments	p. 125
About the Editors	p. 126
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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From "The Stuttering Lover" by Emerson Brooks (1894):

I lu-love you very well,
Much mu-more than I can tell,
With a lu-lu-lu-lu-love I cannot utter;
I kn-know just what to say
But my tongue gets in the way,
And af-fe-fe-fe-fe-fection's bound to stutter!

"The Potato" by Eliza Cook (1818-1839):

The useful and the beautiful
Are not far apart we know.
And thus the beautiful are glad to have,
The homely looking Potato.
On the land, or on the sea,
Wherever we may go,
We are always glad to welcome
The homely Potato.
A practical and moral lesson
This may plainly show,
That though homely, our heart can be
Like that of the homely Potato.

Excerpted from Very Bad Poetry by Kathryn Petras, Ross Petras
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.