Summary: Everyone loves and admires a good poem…but what about the bad ones? After discussing his own experience writing terrible poetry, Jacke analyzes the 10 things that make a poem go wrong, assesses the curious role of Scotland and Michigan in developing bad poetry, and reviews some candidates for the worst poet in history, including:<br> <br> * Jennifer Aniston, whose astonishingly bad love poem to John Mayer graced (disgraced?) the pages of Star magazine;<br> * James McIntyre, the Canadian poet known as “the Chaucer of Cheese”;<br> * Julia A. Moore, the “Sweet Singer of Michigan,” whose poems were described as “worse than a Gatling gun” and “rare food for the lunatic,” but who insisted on giving public performances (to her husband’s mortification and Mark Twain’s delight);<br> * Margaret Cavendish, the seventeenth-century aristocrat whose nature poems took her into the unintentionally comic realm of extreme bad taste (and near cannibalism);<br> <br> …and many others as well. It’s a celebration of bad poetry… the agony and the ecstasy… the cringeworthy and the triumphant… or, as William McGonagall, one of the best (worst?) of the bad poets might say: “This episode is very fine / Indeed I think it very fine.”<br> Show Notes: <br> We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).<br> You can find more literary discussion at <a href="http://www.jackewilson.com/">jackewilson.com</a> and more episodes of the series at <a href="http://www.historyofliterature.com/">historyofliterature.com</a>.<br> Check out our Facebook page at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/historyofliterature/">facebook.com/historyofliterature</a>.<br> Music Credits:<br> “<a href="https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Advent_Chamber_Orchestra/Selections_from_the_November_2006_Concert/Advent_Chamber_Orchestra_-_04_-_Handel_-_Entrance_to_the_Queen_of_Sheba_for_Two_Oboes_Strings_and_Continuo_allegro">Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba</a>” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the <a href="https://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a> / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/">CC by SA</a>).<br> <br> <a class="synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-48 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Share on Facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fhistoryofliterature.com%2F62-bad-poetry%2F&t=62%20Bad%20Poetry&s=100&p%5Burl%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fhistoryofliterature.com%2F62-bad-poetry%2F&p%5Bimages%5D%5B0%5D=https%3A%2F%2Fi0.wp.com%2Fhistoryofliterature.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F10%2Fbad-poets.png%3Ffit%3D1200%252C628&p%5Btitle%5D=62%20Bad%20Poetry" style="font-size: 0px; width: 48px; height: 48px; margin: 0; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-right: 5px;"></a><a class="synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-48 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-twitter nolightbox" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Share on Twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhistoryofliterature.com%2F62-bad-poetry%2F&text=Hey%20check%20this%20out" style="font-size: 0px; width: 48px; height: 48px; margin: 0; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-right: 5px;"></a><a class="synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-48 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-google_plus nolightbox" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Share on Google+" href="https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhistoryofliterature.com%2F62-bad-poetry%2F" style=""></a>
