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The remedy for bad poetry is good limericks.

The London Review of Books publishes, in its June 4 issue, a rivulet of consciousness by the poet Craig Raine. “Gatwick” expresses the thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season (speaking of which, read this if you want a good poem about being a dried up old guy), and readers are not only grossed out by this dirty old man poem, but they rightly note that in any case it’s a very bad poem. (Nothing wrong with its subject matter, by the way. Great prose as well as poetry has been written about being horny.)

The poet’s passport control agent at the airport tells him she studied his poetry. He writes:

We are close. We are both grinning.
We have come
together by a miracle.
Two sinners simultaneously sinning.
In passport control. No shame.

Miracle? Sinning? Where in this grubby meandering poem is there anything to justify language like that? Nor does it come across as ironic, as it might in, say, T.S. Eliot. It’s just there, lazily wanting to lift the meaning of the encounter, and of the poem, to someplace higher than the merely horny.

Rather than just complain about the LRB printing this poem, one reader wrote a limerick about it.

There once was a poet who went
To very great lengths to invent
An excuse for his boner
Which shamed its poor owner
And turned his shorts into a tent.

Now that’s great poetry.

Margaret Soltan, June 4, 2015 2:22PM
Posted in: great writing, poem

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5 Responses to “The remedy for bad poetry is good limericks.”

  1. John Says:
    June 4th, 2015 at 6:23PM

    good limericks are good for just about anything…

  2. steven augustine Says:
    June 4th, 2015 at 10:52PM

    But the fourth line still needs work, eh?

    How about:

    There once was a poet who went
    To very great lengths to invent
    An excuse for his boner
    (although “bone’s” a misnomer)
    so all of his poems were bent

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:
    June 5th, 2015 at 4:47AM

    steven: Nice.

  4. steven augustine Says:
    June 5th, 2015 at 5:46AM

    Thanks, Margaret! (laugh)

  5. steven augustine Says:
    June 5th, 2015 at 6:12AM

    (Margaret, I see we share an interest: Don D! You may not agree with anything in this piece but perhaps you’ll find another DeLillo initiate’s POV of interest)…

    https://stupidfuckingshitifuckinghate.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/the-great-delillo/

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