The Paris Review

The handwritten manuscript of a poem by the man considered the worst poet in the English language, William Topaz McGonagall, is expected to fetch up to £3,000 at auction. While the doggerel-esque verse, “In Praise of the Royal Marriage,” is certainly no threat to Tennyson, it  doesn’t seem worthy of the dead-fish and rotten-egg tributes the Scottish bard’s performances regularly elicited on the music hall stage. His most infamous work is probably “The Tay Bridge Disaster,” commemorating an 1879 bridge collapse in which numerous train passengers were killed; it is either a masterpiece of outsider art or of insensitivity.

 

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

Jason Novak works at a grocery store in Berkeley, California, and changes diapers in his spare time.

On April 15, Kim Jong-Un, the new leader of North Korea, gave his long-awaited maiden speech, on the hundredth anniversary of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder. Befitting the occasion, enormous crowds attended, and male and female soldiers marched with goose-stepping precision.

A full transcript has just been provided by a North Korean website, but for the readers of The Paris Review, a condensed version has been prepared, in poetic form.
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