Intergallactic Poetry Appreciation

Vogon poetry is not the worst in the Universe. But the Vogons are bad poets. Perhaps the worst ones in the universe. Consider the portion

"dr fllthprtyulipa

Rtthy mnsprksakal"

There is nothing wrong with it.

However, combined with

"Rhtt ghlyippnss

Gerpillioustarte heliaster heliaster"

it becomes catastrophic. Indeed so bad that one begins to re-read it to see if it is really as horrible as on the first reading.

 

Normally I do not read poetry. Even the pieces that I criticize. I don't not read it, but hurriedly glance through it. Picking on words and pieces and sort of connecting the ideas. If the picture that emerges seems to make sense, I write out my criticism or words of appreciation. And conserve my "will read in detail and consider every portion" for prose- mostly newspaper articles and newsflashes about the stock market. I invested a lot of Arcaturan Artemii in the NYSE and lost a fortune- but then Arcaturas was destroyed and what would I do with it anyhow.

Back to poetry, you can see how bad poetry can be a drag. It wastes time. Time I can spend more constructively doing other things. Bad poetry forces me to read it- analyze it and get disturbed by it.

Good poetry is easy. Raetians are decent poets. Or as good as poets can be. With three word poems- they hardly waste intellectual space. And are very content with "very nice" as a criticism. Indeed they are content with no comments at all. Creatures of a few but well-chosen words indeed.

Vogons, on the contrary want you to read their poetry. And criticize it. It is usually appalling, so the criticism becomes forced- every other species is forced to go through and for sanity's sake make noises about it. And the noises follow. Like the case quoted above. How can you not be compelled to say that it is all wrong.

"heliaster heliaster" indeed

When actually "fllthprtyulipa

Rtthy" cannot be "heliaster". It needs "beliramna seliarmna" or the entire inteneded meaning is lost. And how does one know intended meaning? Simply because the Vogon poet has expressed it clearly, loudly and several times- in prose at the beginning of, in the middle of and at the end of each and every poem.

They are bad poets. Very bad ones. But they get their audience. Of course one dies in throes of supra-gallactic seizures and stomach cirrhosis (species that have stomachs) but one is an audience- unwilling or otherwise.

Edited to Add: this has been written by an Alien Alter Ego Intellikins Alienofski. A little green creature, this one often writes about things about the universe etc. Should have clarified earlier, but Intellikins has no copyright or copyleft issues.