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GenePool
Humor
The Bad Poets Society
It all began, as so very many things do, with a phone call.
In the aftermath of the horrible events of September Eleventh, I found myself wondering what probably most everyone else in the country was wondering: do I know anyone who might have been in the World Trade Center? I stumbled through a mental checklist of acquaintances, and realized that, first, I obviously don't have many friends because, second, I could only come up with the name of one person I know who even lives in New York. His name is Chris Jobin. I went to college with him, and I consider him a good friend, even if he is a total bastard.
In order to find out if Chris was okay I had to call another friend, Joe Zamparelli. Joe is my way-station to Chris, and he is far more conveniently located about fifteen minutes from my home. (Despite his obvious proximity, Joe and I only see one another about once a year. This is not because Joe is also a total bastard, but because I have a full time job and Joe is an actor.) Joe assured me that Chris "and his wife" are both fine. I told him this was great news, that Chris had managed to avert certain death while also managing to get married, all without bothering to tell me himself. Then Joe asked me, on an unrelated subject, if I was interested in bad poetry.
Which is how I came to be associated with the Bad Poets Society.
The Bad Poets Society is the deeply disturbed offspring of Jon Haber and John L Galligan, who are the co-authors of a column in a local advertising spectacle called Editorial Humor, among other things. They started it five years ago, and it has apparently been going on annually since then despite the fact that I'd never before even heard of it. But then, I don't get out much.
Every year, John, or perhaps Jon, collects all the truly bad poetry he can for this show. Now, you might think you know from bad poetry. You are wrong. We are not talking mere doggerel here; we're talking the most execrable pile of poetic endeavor ever envisioned. The finest writers on Earth could not, at gunpoint and with specific orders to write bad poetry, come up with this stuff. You have to have a special gift to write this kind of bad. And apparently, it's not easy to find, which is why every year John, or perhaps Jon, takes the train down to Washington to visit the Library of Congress in his exhaustive search for the baddest of the bad.
Once the poetry has been assembled and de-loused, readers are found whose sacred responsibility it is to interpret these magnificently wretched specimens for an audience. This is where Joe comes in. Joe is one of those people that everybody knows, (you probably know Joe too,) which is what makes him perfect for this sort of thing. For example, he needed a sixth reader for Friday night's show. Then I called him out of the blue on Wednesday, and promptly agreed to become his sixth reader. Problem solved. He didn't have to do a goddamned thing except wait for the phone to ring. (You might think that had terrorists not attacked us on Tuesday, Joe would have never gotten his sixth reader. More likely, someone else would have called instead.) When it came time to drop off the copies of the poems-- on Thursday night-- he didn't even do the driving. Instead, he had his friend Lis do it. He probably didn't even split the cost of gas with her. And of course, Lis was also one of the readers.
But Joe did match the readers with the poems, and here he did a pretty impressive job. He insisted his method involves nothing more than reading the poems aloud and guessing who might interpret it in an interesting and funny way. I have my doubts about this, because I don't think anybody would willingly read all of these poems aloud; I read only five of them and may need therapy. I think there may be a dart board, a blindfold, and a bottle of Thunderbird involved in Joe's selection procedure, to be honest.
Who might be interested in sitting for a couple of hours and listening to bad poetry? Lots of people, apparently, although I should point out that there is no admission fee, which is probably a factor. This might also explain the weirdos. We had two certified weirdos. One showed up exceptionally early, sat in the front row, and then proceeded to drill me on his feelings regarding the terrible persecution he suffers because of his Boston accent. (He spoke to me because I made the mistake of making eye contact with him.) At one point in this extremely one-sided conversation he asked if I'd read a Boston Globe article from two Sundays ago about accents, featuring a linguistics professor from Boston College. "You mean Michael Connelly?" I asked. He looked excited. "You read the article?" "I know Michael Connelly personally," I answered. This stunned him so completely that I was able to break off eye contact and look busy until the show started. He probably thinks me and Michael Connelly (who I do know; my wife studied under him) are stalking him.
The other weirdo was a tall man who dressed in what I like to call "urban homeless." He sat in the front row too, which is evidently where weirdos usually prefer to sit. He brought his own video camera, which he used in part to film us at the podium, and in part to film himself in a super close-up. About a third of the way through the show-- with reader G Warren Steele about to read the gripping Song of the Bayou-- we all realized that the odd man in the front row was speaking. In point of fact he was reciting his own poetry. (I have no idea what makes a person want to show up at an event called the Bad Poets Society and recite his own poetry. Perhaps he was insulted that we didn't consider his work bad enough.) Warren patiently waited for the weirdo to finish, and then we all offered him a round of applause, after which he put away his video camera and left.
As for the show itself, I can say in all honesty that I have never enjoyed myself more thoroughly on-stage in my life. As Joe-- the only one other than Jo(h)n to have read all the poems in advance without also dashing out his eyes-- pointed out, the real fun is watching the readers interpret the pieces. Because when you read these horrifying poetic train wrecks to yourself, only rarely do you even find yourself giggling. It's only in the hands of an accomplished reader (I was the only rookie) that the true wonder of the piece comes out. I have to tip my hat to readers Lis Adams, Colin Buckley, Julie Dapper, Jim Muzzi, and G Warren Steele, whose skill and experience helped me considerably when it was my turn.
There is no way I can present all the highlights from the many performances (although Colin's rendition of Cow-Cow, a poem consisting almost entirely of the phrase "Cow-Cow?" will always hold a special place in my heart) because there were just too many highlights.
I will, however, talk about my own personal highlight. (Because it's my column, so there.) This occurred late in the evening, when reading my fourth poem of the night.
Up to that point, I'd already read Walt Disney by Ethel Jacobson, ("Our cup of woe was pretty ickie/'til he slipped in a welcome Mickey!") I, Francis E. Dec by Francis E Dec, a poem that has everything except punctuation, and a poem called Dried Apple Pies by someone who was wise enough to keep his name off the piece. The audience had heard over an hour of bad poetry, and laughter had taken its toll. Many of them were in tears, and one or two looked to be in dire need of artificial rescucitation. In short, it wouldn't take much to send the whole room over the edge.
The title of my fourth poem was A Bowl of October, by Helen Bevington. After the fact, Joe confessed that it was almost cut from the show because he and John/Jon didn't think it was quite "bad" enough. Neither he nor I have any idea how it ended up being as funny as it was.
Yet, as soon as I read the first line ("October is a breakfast food") I knew I was going to be in some trouble. The audience was laughing so hard, I was starting to laugh, and once I got started I was pretty sure I'd never be able to stop. I made it through lines two and three okay ("With fields of shredded wheat./ The golden cornflakes lie on the lawn,") but line four ("And wheaties in the street.") sent me over the edge.
I used to take personal pride in my ability to maintain composure on-stage. In college, I acted in Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, and in one particular scene two characters were supposed to force a third character-- the maid-- off-stage while the maid delivered a lengthy nonsensical speech. Well, the actor playing the maid tripped, and both the actors pushing her (one of whom was Joe) tripped, and pretty soon everyone in the house was laughing. Except me. I had the next line, after all, and I was supposed to sound consternated. So I waited until the laughter died down, and delivered my line, and that got the laughter going all over again. And I still kept my composure.
Evidently, I've lost this skill. I looked down at the fifth line ("The puffed rice clouds, the grapenut hills,") and realized there was no way on Earth I was going to be able to read it with any degree of clarity whatsoever, not just because my body was currently wracked with paroxysms of laughter but because I couldn't see the page with the tears streaming down my face. So I stepped back and looked to the side, and this made the audience laugh even harder. It took me ten or fifteen seconds to compose myself enough to even step back up to the podium. I held up a finger to quiet the audience (this made them laugh harder again, so, big help that was) and then assaulted the remainder of the poem ("Oh! the oatmeal skies, abed/Have wakened me in the crispies air--/And so I have breakfasted.") as best I could.
I'm still not sure what made this ridiculous little poem so damned funny. (You're probably going back right now and reading the parenthetical quotations in order and saying "yeah, so?") I think a lot of it might have been that everyone there desperately needed to laugh, at least for a little while. This theory seemed to hold on Sunday, as well, when I performed stand up at the Comedy Studio (also in Harvard Square.) If ever there was a time for people to laugh, this is it.
The Bad Poets Society is an annual event. Early word is, the next one will take place in April of next year (National Poetry Month, evidently,) and I highly recommend you make every effort to attend. I certainly plan to be there.
© 2001, Gene Doucette
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