Notes for the Bad Poetry Seminar

Poetry

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Poetry

The Bad Poetry Seminar

A Course of Study

Notes to “October's Bright Blue Weather”

Let's begin with the title. What a wonderful, long, collection of ugly sounds! The “b”s all bump into each other, and bumble along inexorably to the final word--“weather”--perhaps the most uninteresting word in the English language. If the poem were called “October's Bright Blue Abortion,” or even “October's Bright Blue Helicopter,” you would expect a surprise, but a certain hopelessness sets in the moment one reads the word “weather.”

STANZA 1

You expect her to move from June to some metaphor. What will she compare it to? What can it rival? Then it hits you. Oh no! We're back to October's bright blue weather! That whole first stanza, in which the poet can charm you, dazzle you and invite you into her poem, is wasted on bringing us back to that awful title.

Then a horrible thought strikes--how many more times will she end stanzas with “October's bright blue weather”? Most likely, one reasons, the poem will end with this dreary phrase.

STANZA 2

Here is a pretty tedious list of plant and insect activity. It's true that the line “Belated, thriftless vagrant”, even if it doesn't mean anything, threatens to lift the poem to an eccentric, lyrical plane, but then the awful, literal rhyme--“fragrant” for “vagrant” (they're almost the same word) pulls the poem back to mediocrity.

STANZA 3

Who knows what gentians rolling their fringes tight means--let's hope that in 1916 everyone was aware of this phenomenon. You can see that the image of the gentians rolling their fringes tight and saving them for the next day really captivates Helen Hunt. (Though why would one save fringes for the next day? Isn't this one of those poetic metaphors that refers to nothing anyone has ever done?) Nonetheless, she completely fails to convey the charm of this idea. And she is so desperate for her obligatory stupid rhyme, that she forgets that chestnuts do generally give a little sound of warning before they fall.

STANZA 4

Now she is even more desperate.
Line 1: Poetic inversion is always a sign of desperation. (Poetic inversion means that instead of saying: “When red apples lie on the ground” you say: “When on the ground red apples lie.”)
Line 2: And in what way do apples resemble jewels (except from 1000 feet)? And who ever sees piles of jewels?
Line 3: I doubt anything is redder than apples. I've certainly never noticed a vine on an old stone wall that was redder than an apple. And where are we? Where is this poem located? One minute we're admiring apples--in an orchard?--the next we're contemplating “old stone walls.” Are these ruins? Crumbling stone walls? Some Ivy League laboratory building?

STANZA 5

Line 1: Why use the word “things”? It's unspecific, it's dull, it's not even a rhyme. Does she honestly think it's cute to say “lovely wayside things”? If so, she is sicker than I thought. (Unless in 1908 it was cute to say “lovely wayside things.”)
Line 2: You mean every “lovely wayside thing” has white-winged seeds? Or does “lovely wayside thing” refer to a specific species? Is there a particular plant that just happens to have the name “thing”?
Line 4: Here is one of those great lines that only bad poets can write. “Late aftermaths are growing.” That's priceless. (I am serious.) “Late aftermaths are growing.” It's profound.

STANZA 6

This is a particularly worthless stanza, except for the awkward felicity of “idle golden freighting”, and the way the meter goes to shit in the 3rd line.

STANZA 7

Line 1: Suddenly, there are comrades in the poem. And what are comrades? Drinking buddies? Hunters? Lovers? Gay lovers? R evolutionary Marxists? Out of nowhere, the poem has protagonists, who presumably live in the city, and want to visit the country.
Line 2: Oh, I see, she's comparing them to the animals in Noah's ark--or is that just a dumb coincidence?
Line 3: I will ignore that crack about “misers.”
Line 4: It is really unfair to also end the penultimate stanza “October's bright blue weather.”