What? You don’t know about The Stuffed Owl?  This is a marvelous collection of bits of bad poetry, first published in 1930 and reissued several times, most recently in 2003. Here you can read awful doggerel by great poets and corny attempts to be sublime by lesser versifiers. One reviewer of this edition wrote,

The Stuffed Owl is an absolute delight. I have loved the book for more than sixty years, since I first encountered it. Indeed, a number of years ago, I came upon the sublime idea of an anthology to be called The New Stuffed Owl. I gave up this mad notion when everyone pointed out to me that asking a living poet to allow herself or himself to be included in such a volume was pragmatically an invitation to murderous warfare. There are great poets like Wordsworth and Tennyson and others who are included in The Stuffed Owl. One loves them all the more for seeing that they crashed occasionally. Any reader who opens this book and starts reading will be immensely delighted.     – Harold Bloom

I have been collecting additions to The Stuffed Owl for many years, and will be sharing them with you any day now. If you can’t wait, and even if you can, rush out and buy this book. You’ll thank me.

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