The Theory and Practice of Bad Poetry

Here, as promised, is the "poem" that defines the genre of Bad Poetry by providing an example of it:

Some poetry’s bad, Heaven knows,

Yet all poetry’s different from prose.

Bad Poetry’s bound

To patterns of sound

(Though these may not accord quite with those).

It roams through every dialect on Earth,

Stretches rhythms for all that they’re worth,

Chooses subjects prosaic,

Becomes a mosaic

Of thoughts Good Poems never give birth.

What Bad Poetry never will do

Is claim, “I’m so much wiser than you,

If you say I’m not great,

Yourself you denigrate”—

Bad Poetry’s honest and true.

It will freely admit that it’s Bad.

Grandiosity it’s never had.

If it chance to beguile

You into a slight smile,

It may open your mind just a tad.

(Although the book linked has not been my model, it was my inspiration for feeling free to publish "poems"; I don't believe I know how good or bad any of my verses are. So the general label for things I write in some sort of Poetic Form is "Bad Poetry.")