The Worst Poet in History | Fascinating Failures
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- Опубліковано 5 сер 2024
- "Vincent Van Gogh. Emily Dickinson. Claude Monet. Edgar Allan Poe. Each one a genius who died long before the true brilliance of their work was ever fully appreciated..."
I tell the story of William McGonagall - a man who may well have been the worst poet ever to put pen to paper...
MUSIC:
► "A Stranger Thing" by Bruno E
► "Smokey's Lounge" by TrackTribe
ILLUSTRATIONS:
► Comic panels by Emma Galloway (artofemmag.carrd.co/)
#podcast #history #failure - Розваги
"You're without a doubt the worst poet I've ever heard of."
"But you HAVE heard of me."
50% is a passing grade
@@TheNewRobotMaster Not usually. Anything below 60% is usually considered an F.
@@MatthewTheWanderer We meet again Matthew! You told me I was evil the last time we met in the comments. Small internet! How's it going this time? By the way, when I went to university in North America, 50% was a pass. Maybe things are different where you live, but that doesn't give you the excuse to say "not usually, ACHSHUALLY"
@@TheNewRobotMaster I'm sure there's someone, somewhere, making the argument that even 50% is somehow discriminatory..
"Never one to ignore a direct instruction from his brain..." LMAOOOO
I laughed at that, too!😆
It reminds me of a fictional creator, who "always faced temptation by succumbing to it" (the temptation being of course a creative one).
I gazed upon my UA-cam feed
When my eyes had stopped to read
The name of one sir Kristian Crow
Had filled my screen, all aglow
The subject? Failure, Fascinating
I found the concept captivating
A poet he had deemed the worst
My curiosity had burst
William McGonagall was his name
His poetry had brought him fame
But not for reasons you'd expect
Had you thought "being good" correct
Out, his career did not pan
Though, nonetheless, a decent man
He wrote and wrote until his death
They say a rhyme was his last breath
For centuries, his body lay
His legacy lives on today
And 'tho this happened oh so long ago
We shan't forget ol' Bill McGonagall
To Mr. Crow, who shared this tale
Thanks for sharing us this fail
You didn't even scream or yell,
"Like, subscribe, and hit the bell"
This is a heck of a lot better than any of old Bill’s poems…
Oh my gosh, your poem is perfect!☺️ You've got some talent there. Very entertaining! Thanks for sharing!
Nicely done!
Fittingly droll 👌😂
@@jelyfisher --- I could not help but scroll!
The moral of this video, and of his life, is - if you cannot succeed, or hope to compete, fail so spectacularly and with such enthusiasm that your failures pass into the stuff of legend.
Just don't get anybody killed whilst failing. People don't like that.
People always remember the best and the worst never the ones in between.
"It's not about winning, it's about being so amazingly BAD that no one can ignore you." -Mung from Chowder.
I've always loved how he once described a publican as being "the first man ever to throw a plate of peas at me," as if that became a common occurrence.
Although he wasn't always defenceless against incoming food... From The Glasgow Evening Times review at the time - 'After reciting some of his own poems to an accompaniment of whistles and cat-calls, the Bard armed himself with a most dangerous-looking broadsword and strode up and down the platform declaiming "Clarence's dream" and "Give me another horse! - Bind up my wounds!" His voice rose to a howl. He thrust and slashed at imaginary foes. A shower of apples and oranges fell on the platform. Almost before they touched, they were met by the fell edge of McGonagall's claymore, and cut to pieces. The audience yelled with delight; McGonagall yelled louder still, and with a fury which I fancy was not wholly feigned."'
So I take it this dude was basically what people like Tommy Wiseau and Neil Breen are considered today 🤪 The stuff they're known for is bad, but in a funny way, not a boring way.
What was the 1890s version of a black tank top?
@@rinoz47An ascot and a waistcoat?
@@rinoz47: The handlebar mustache.
No. People have actually heard of William McGonagall.
Except Neil Breen isn't even funny in a bad way. I'd say a better example is Ed Wood.
You should give Florence Foster Jenkins a go some day. She is ranked as "the world's worst opera singer ... No one, before or since, has succeeded in liberating themselves quite so completely from the shackles of musical notation." And there are recordings of her very special talent in action.
I was just thinking the same! Also a video on Amanda McKittrick Ros would be fun. She was infamous as one of the worst novelists ever.
Excellent suggestion - will take a look!
Sounds like a fun story!
@@Victoria-cm7yh - I'd love to hear this one as well. Never heard of her until now but sounds like a story I'd really enjoy!☺️
@@Victoria-cm7yh Oh man, I'd love a video on Amanda McKittrick Ros. I first learned about her by learning about how the Inklings would take turns reading her works out loud to see who could go the longest without laughing
“…suggesting he was a better father and friend than he was a poet” I guess I’m really emotional today because this line almost put me to tears. I love a historical figure who turns out to have just been a good guy.
Didn't quite fog up, but I've had a crap day, and you're right...I needed to see this video.
Would that I had the confidence of this man
His level of unabashed confidence baffles me. It's incomprehensible to me how unselfconscious he is.
oh god. yeah i’ve been published before and i am so scared of writing because i’m convinced i’m terrible!
I'd settle for just the positive outlook. McGonagall seems to have been Scots poetry's Ed Wood...
Make that man an honorary Vogon.
Douglas Adam's specifically called him out as being the only one with worse poetry than the Vogons
The worst was Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings
"Strangers pelting him with the ingredients of a cake" Hahaha
In the Netherlands when celebrating Sinterklaas (related to Christmas) it's tradition to write poems with the gifts. McGonagall would be perfect for this, for he achieves the exact comic awkwardness that is a good sinterklaas poem.
I read about William McGonagall in "The Book of Heroic Failures". Two sections were devoted to him (as both the Worst Poet and the Worst MacBeth).
I think I want that book...
@@stevetournay6103 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Heroic_Failures
I was eating my breakfast and drinking tea when I started watching this - soon realized that this would be impossible. I never realized you had this side of you because I've only heard Fascinating Horror. Think of what this man would have had on his gravestone had it not been an unmarked grave.
"If his poetry was any better he would be anonymous."
This reminds me of that theory that there are 4 types of people. Ones who are rubbish at something, but know they are rubbish. Ones that are great at something and know they are great at it.
Ones that are great at something but think they are rubbish at it. And lastly and the most dangerously, Ones that are rubbish at something but yet they think they are great at it.
William McGonagall definitely fits into that last category.
That last one describes Trump as a businessman. (Sorry to bring politics into this…)
@@HeronCoyote1234its not even that you brought anything political into it, its that ur claiming a man who is a billionaire and has properties all over the world is rubbish as a businessman. Your comment is rubbish, maybe stop watching cnn
@@vicvega3614 you are actually correct, he is a good businessman. perhaps they meant to say that the last one describes Trump (and Biden) as presidents perfectly
vicvega3614, wow. You Trump worshipers are amazing at turning light into dark and darkness into light. You can honestly say that you believe that A person that filed for bankruptcy six times is a "good businessman." Three of them were casinos. The house is ALWAYS supposed to win. He literally paid more taxes to China when being exempt from paying large taxes to the point that a middle class person paid more taxes than he did. I could go on but I won't. I will ask you to please explain who seemingly decent people think that he is a Godly person after he wants to bang his oldest daughter? I'm not trying to be a smart @ss. I sincerely am trying to understand. Please explain.
He has my respect for living the dream, supporting himself with his creative writing.
And before any of us get on our high horses about him having to live off his friends, so did Henry David Thoreau.
McGonagall's disastrous poetry could have been prevented with stricter safety protocol and less cost-cutting measures.
Fewer. 😁
The phrase "grotesquely optimistic" describes McGonagall perfectly. 😂
I was gonna come in and say that maybe the reviewers at the time were exaggerating how bad he was, but Jesus Christ, this guy has the writing ability of a 5 year old.
It’s more like “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.” As someone who has had to teachers fifth graders how to write a poem, he gets the concept of poetry. It has to rhyme, has a theme, and has stanzas. He understands rhyme schemes. But it stops there. He doesn’t understand meter or storytelling. He just doesn’t have talent. Yet he doesn’t let that stop him. He’s a Dunning-Kruger phenomenon. He doesn’t try to get better or even try to run with it as being humorous all along, like Tommy Wiseau. He just keeps at it. His stubbornness is almost admirable.
He WALKED for 120 MILES.... WALKED.
Good for him, it must be nice to be immune to negative criticism 😊
Dude writes like a child.
He was a poetaster, a derisive name for a poet who concentrates on nothing but rhyming.
@@F40PH-2CATCertainly didn't give a toss about scansion, no...
@@F40PH-2CAT He certainly did earn the title. His poetry has zero flow or rhythm, the imagery and use of metaphor and/or simile are minimal at best
I’ve seen children’s poems. His are better but less creative.
Hey, who ever said up was the only way to aim? 🤷🏻♂️😅
The burn from that newspaper was incredible 😂
Fascinating horror is a channel that I view
Always paying attention to when a video is new
Needed to hear stories to my head fill
Stories of how innocent people were kill
I am dead 😃👏
Bravo! Bravo, I say!!...No, let's skip the encore... 😂
😂
Don't give up the day-job.
I'm so glad you mentioned this video on your main channel, as I had no idea you had this secondary one. The different way you explain the stories here is wonderful xD Got genuine laughs from me a few times. Did you draw the art for these pieces as well? Excellent job!
Ha, heard you mention him in the Tay Bridge disaster video and I searched him up on UA-cam. I see you got your bases covered!! Nice work as always :)
Sadly about halfway through the video I was imagining Gordon Lightfoot and instead we got…this
I do hope Dundee has a William McGonagall Day?! Thanks, KC!
That actually sounds like it would be fun! A day to write poetry as badly as you can 😅
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley Yes, lol!
I love both of these ideas!
The Vogons have nothing on this bloke.
I was thinking that his poems might be a sample of vogon poetry.
McGonagall seems to have been the Ed Wood of his era.
Great summary! I'm glad to have found your second channel. You are very good at this!
Since it seems Fascinating Failures is evolving into a full fledged series, I implore you to make an episode on the termination of Selen Tatsuki from Nijisanji EN! Not only is it a masterclass in how NOT to do PR (and its impact is arguably still felt by Nijisanji to this day), but it remains relatively unknown outside of the virtual UA-camr community I think, so I would love to see it covered on a channel like yours.
Sounds like Dr. Seuss. There's a fine line between love and nausea.
But he made loads of money though.
Theodore Geisel's verse scanned, though. McGonagall's, when it scans, I'm pretty sure it does so by accident...
"A fine line between love and nausea", though, now that is a good line. Doesn't go quite where you think it will!
Nah, Dr Seuss is genius. He writes in consistent anapestic tetrameter and is creative with word choice, even coining new ones.
Still better than Machine Gun Kelly...
I like how the Wikipedia page on this guy has a list of people who have also become infamous in the world of writing and entertainment, who are sometimes referred to as “McGonagalls.”
Excellent video!! Keep up the good work!
Absolutely loved this, Kristian! Fun to hear something different from you!
Superb video. The ideal blend of factual and evocative, with just a dash of pleasantly withering irony.
McGonagall strikes me as a character from Trainspotting, a century early. Not entirely delusional, merely aware of his limitations, but willing to put in the effort for a laugh.
Though the journalist who came up with the line about '1893' deserves a plaque of his own.
I also want to add that, as well as the characters you mention near the end of the video, and Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter books that others have mentioned, McGonagall was also the inspiration for 'William the Gonnagle' the bagpiper and warrior bard in Terry Practhett's Discworld Wee Free Men. In that incarnation, poetry is used in battle, proving so terrible as to be deadly to all who hear it.
The late great Terry Pratchett, in his DIscworld series, created a tribe of small blue humanoids called the Wee Free Men. They had a battle poet known as the mcgonagall.
An outsider artist, for sure. What a lovely tribute!!!
He’s the literal embodiment of “so bad that it’s good” 🤣
Legend in his own mind. 😄
As laughably bad as his poetry is (he almost makes Rik from The Young Ones look like a fantastic poet in comparison. Almost.), I thought it was genuinely sweet that he had the support of his friends. Sometimes it pays to be nice.
Truly one of the Poets of all time.
He had the best support system. Bless his heart
Ah, knew that voice was familiar...
Gonna sub just because of FH.
As a pretty thorough failure myself, who occasionally writes song lyrics, I look forward to more of these stories.
He's the Ed Wood of Victorian poets.
This guy was one part Andy Kaufman, one part Emperor Norton I. It seems that he knew exactly what he was doing. He was writing for a newspaper and his poems would have been very effective in a newspaper because they are not very wordy and easy to understand.
I love this, very funny! Famous for being such an awful poet. A reason not to rhyme. Even rhyming in protest… he made a living, that’s something. Great story. Thank you!❤
That’s a great ending. Too bad though, Anonymous has had a great career. 😂
In none of the samples given here is there anything like a metaphor. Dude was 100% literal.
Love that "like a metaphor" is a simile...
Really enjoy both of your channels. The music for this was fitting for this one, but I hope you go back to your usual theme.
Ok, thought this was on fascinating... my bad. I do wonder what you might've had to do to get through reading those...lines 😊
Thank you for this laugh! 😅😂 PLEASE DO A STORY ON NEIL BREEN!
Ah. So this is the poet the Vogons were inspired by.
You have to admire his confidence, however misguided it might have been.
McGonagall relayed the news for people, not everyone could read or write in those days, so in a way he carried on an oral tradition of telling the news in prose or songs which had always been done previously for hundreds of years.
Cool story, thanks. A shame he, 'WilGon', never bought a rocket company, we'd already be on Mars.
you musk be joking
@@ydoomenaud 👍
Having not read Hitchhikers Guide, I didn’t know who Vogon, or Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings were. Or that Jennings was based on Adams’ friend and collaborator Paul Neill Milne Johnstone.
McGonagall's poetry style reminds me of Data's ode to his pet cat Spot on Star Trek: the Next Generation. Also, the Vogons are jealous.
Great rap lyrics! 😊
I feel a lot better about my own lack of poetry skills now. At least I'm aware of it.
I hold that Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings was worse.
👍
Imagine a literary collaboration between this guy and Amanda Mckittrick Ros 😱
I honestly don't think this guy's poetry is that horrible. It's not great, but it's surely not the worst ever.
The delightful thing is I'm all the way in California and I immediately knew who this was going to be because of that awful Tay Bridge poem. also, that Tay Bridge disaster is probably known about by far more people around the world because his poem is so awful that it's gone viral in the 21st-century.
No publicity is bad publicity? Sorry he died pennyless but it seems like he actually was happy in his delusion for most of his life like the Emperor of San Francisco- harmless enough not to be hurting anyone with his ego, unlike some narcissists, although I wonder what his wife and kids thought of it all.
I hear he was the inspiration for Vogon poetry in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
Hi there! Glad to see this upload❤
I believe the local journalists at the time were of the opinion that he was intentionally playing a comic character of his own creation and he was very good at it!
Are you from the nordic countries? I love this series!
10:44 "Even as strangers were pelting him with ingredients of a cake..."
9:13 "flowers, eggs, stale bread, and vegetables"
What kind of cake is that?
"Stirring stuff" indeed;)
He had a genuine concern for the souls of men. He might have wasted his life on poetry. He might have been called to preach. 🤔
God got tired of watching him being pelted with garbage at the circus, and used authority to put an end to it.
How many times do we get angry over something we have been delivered from even though it was disgusting? 😳
When you read his poetry, it sounds like Beastie Boys lyrics.
This guy was before his time. He could have been Dr Seuss if things were different.
To be expected from SJL: "While serving on the House Science Committee in 1997, she reportedly asked if the Mars Pathfinder rover had managed to capture images of an American flag planted on the red planet by Neil Armstrong, presumably incorrectly referring to the flag Armstrong planted on the moon in 1969."
Then there was this from 2010: "Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working," she said.
This gentleman seems like a 19th century Perry Caravello (of Windy City Heat infamy.)
Having seen the remake of Mr. Deeds with Adam Sandler, I can`t help but wonder if McGonagall was the inspiration for Deed`s poems, or even loosely inspiring the character.
Ah: McGonagall was the Ed Wood of Scots poets!
Know what? There ought to be a musical about McGonagall...using those awful verses as lyrics. It could be a scream.
This might have been me in a past life
I think we need to get @RealCivilEngineerGaming over here for a bridge review and a following fact check at 6:25
My favourite way of writing poems is to just make sure the last words rhyme. Really makes sure everything is in time. He is definetly a great poetry writer from what I see. Just have to ignore all the horrible poems that he wrote by the sea (is Dundee by the sea? Really, I just needed to rhyme, you see…sorry).
I get this guy. That makes me sad.
I wonder if he was the inspiration for the Vogon's?
'Twas a cunning plan to make ends meet by merry folk hurling food at the man.
Dude sounds like 1 of a kind, and I approve of this lifestyle choice
British Horror author Ramsey Campbell wrote a short story called "McGonagall in the Head" in reference to the abysmal poetic abilities of this man.
On the other hand, "Topaz" is a great middle name...
He wasn't a poet, and he didn't know it
5:58 wow I just watched this video on the other channel talk about some synergy 😅
2:05 AAAAAGH!!! Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends!
The worst poet still lived his life as a poet
The problem is, if you aren't very good, you just need to keep practicing. And if others tell you that you're not ready, keep working and don't do anything to make a fool of yourself maybe?
Funnily enough he is looked upon with some fondness in Dundee.
His poetry sounds like modern rap, forced rhyming no matter how bad it is
Hilarious. You have to admire his tenacity.
Even the Vogons would not like his poetry.
McGonagall? How about Vogon-agall?
Even worse than Vogon poetry?
Nothing beats Vogon poetry. Ever.
@@dogcarman Wait a minute -- isn't it canon that the very worst poetry ever was written by Miss Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England?
Mac Flecknoe comes to mind and in particular the fun Dryden had with eliding his target's name from "Shadwell":
_Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay,_
_But loads of Sh____ _almost chok'd the way.__
He kind of looks like crazy Nicholas Cage in some of these pictures.