The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse

by D.B. Wyndham Lewis (Editor)

Other authorsBilly Collins (Introduction), Charles Lee (Editor)

Paperback, 2003

Status

Available

Call number

821.008

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

NYRB Classics (2003), Paperback, 296 pages

Description

The editors of this legendary and hilarious anthology write: "It would seem at a hasty glance that to make an anthology of Bad Verse is on the whole a simple matter ... On the contrary ... There is bad Bad Verse and good Bad Verse." Here one finds the best of the worst of the greatest English poets, with an index ("Manure, adjudged a fit subject for the Muse, page 91") that is itself an inspired work of folly. Annotation. Just in time for National Poetry Month--the legendary and hilarious anthology containing the best of the worst poetry ever written by some of the world's most celebrated wordsmiths of the English language, including Dryden, Wordsworth, and Keats.

Media reviews

The Indexer

User reviews

LibraryThing member IreneF

Full of bathos and just plain bad poetry, but you have to take it in small bites, otherwise you just get overwhelmed.

To mend the movement of your heart, How great is my delight!
Gently to wind your morals up And set your hand aright!
--From "A Runcible Thought" by Edward Young. Noted as addressed to

the poet's "dear friend, Voltaire," then in his sixty-eighth year and quite incorrigible.

Many morals get wound up, but I don't think that's what Young had in mind.

Here's another excerpt:

How brave a prospect is a bright backside!--Henry Vaughan

It has one of the best indexes I've ever seen:
Acts of Parliament
Adam, his internal fluids
Bards, dead, common objects on the sea-shore
Dentist, refuge of the suffering fair
Drains. See Sewage system

Okay, I'm stopping now

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LibraryThing member jmeisen

There are some truly amazing and hilarious examples of bad verse in this book — and some of the worst offenders have familiar names (I'm looking at you, Wordsworth!). It has made me want to seek out the book by Julia Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan, that gave such pleasure to Mark Twain. The

book suffers a bit from the attitude and style of the editors, especially their assumption that all readers have the educational background of an upper-class Englishman of the 1930s-40s, leaving some of the humor impenetrable to me. But overall it is funny and enjoyable, and will enjoy a place of honor near my McGonagall collection.

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LibraryThing member KayCliff

A very tongue-in-the-cheek 'Anthology of Bad Verse', compiled, prefaced, hilariously annotated, sub-titled and indexed by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee, includes a masterpiece of humorous indexing in its nine-page index. All entries are perfectly valid, some object-lessons in

subjectheadings
for brevity and perception.

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LibraryThing member antiquary

A collection of verse the editors considered bad, from Abraham Cowley to Alfred Lord Tennyson (roughly from mid 17th century to the end of the 19th). Nearly all are English authors, but a few pieces by Emerson are included.

LibraryThing member jsburbidge

This is a classic, and very funny, anthology of found humour in the form of bad poetry, ranging from errors by major poets -- Dryden, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson all show up, and the title is that of a Wordsworth sonnet ("Yet, helped by Genius -- untired Comforter,/ The presence even of a

stuffed Owl for her / Can cheat the time") -- to those who are famous precisely as bad poets, with Julia Moore in pride of place, and a fair selection of Pope's dunces. (As Hugh Kenner pointed out, Pope himself had too keen an ear and too precise a sense of what he is doing to drop to this level: but the book can be considered in some sense a supplement to Pope's Peri Bathous.) Well worth keeping on one's shelves to dip into from time to time (a straight read-through would be like overdosing on a heavy dessert).

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