Hell of All Poets Mediocre

ABANDON YE, THY HOPES OF LITERARY GRATIFICATION. NO WELL-CRAFTED VERSE DOTH RESIDE HERE IN THIS, THE HELL OF ALL POETS MEDIOCRE.


Circle One: The Internet Linguists and Typo Poets

After entering Hell, Ashley and her guide, XXDarkAngelaXX, reach the first circle. Here are the Internet Linguists and Typo Poets. They sinned because they sped through their poems, not bothering check for typos, too lazy to type out completely what they wished to express. As always, their retribution is symbolic. Typing is made painful and the punishment is eternal, so they are never finished with their work.

1 Down the path i wakled,
 Thru a thick mist.
 But it view was the sign mraking the vestibule of Hell:
 It grew darker and darker and i could c
 Only the fce of my guide,
5 XXDarkAngelaXX,
 Queen of allpoetry.com,
 Who said 2 me:
 “u have g2g very far in2 the detphs of Hell
 In order 2 udnerstand how to b closer 2
10 Our saviors who r watching form heaven: The great Frost,
 Hughes, Dickinson, Sandburg, Seuss,
 And Shakespeare.”
 Soon i could c the danmed,
 Their bleedign fingers
15 Typing 4eva on a scorchingly hottt keyboadr.

Footnotes:
5. XXDarkAngelaXX is the name of a notorious poetess of allpoetry.com. She was created by comedic masterminds, Ashley Albert and Ittai Orr.
10-12. Ashley has placed poetic heroes of her culture in extremely virtuous positions in Heaven. We can ascertain from this that her standard for poetry is very high.


Circle Two: The Misspellers and Grammar Abusers

This circle is reserved for the less educated of the mediocre poets. The shades here were unmotivated to use spell-check in life and wrote with an indolence that caused anyone with a proper grasp of the English language to cringe. Because they evoked discomfort and confusion in so many, they are punished by being jerked about in a whirlwind of letters.

 Next we travelled
 Over the river of english.
 With help from Malacomma.
 She is the leader of the fiends who guard this circle.
20 On the far shore there was many
 Shades of bad-spellers
 Swirling dizzally in a tornado of letters.
 Those who can’t use grammer good
 Speak in jumbled sentences and
25 Their spinned and throwed about by english teacher demins.
 The souls here suffer eternal nauseousness.

Footnotes:
25. The English teacher demons beat the shades of this circle regularly with their rulers and pointer sticks. Sometimes they even force the shades to answer book questions on classic literature.


Circle Three: The Predictable Rhyme Schemers

This canto is brief but effective. Many poetry lovers were greatly irritated by these sinners’ uncontrollable urges to rhyme badly. The souls here are forced to hear loud, obnoxious, cheerful music (the kind popular with children’s shows) and are constantly being attacked by doves.

 The next circle of Hell
 Was deep as a well.
 No one here can find any love
30 The souls are being pecked by doves.
 A sing-song-y tune is blasted in their ears
 No matter what they do it’s all they can hear.
 Oh, how they weep, and cry and are sad,
 But that’s what you get when your rhyming is bad.

Footnotes:
30. The Predictable Rhyme Schemers were famous for being unable to produce a poem without rhyming the words “love” with “dove.”
31. The demons in this circle tend to favor “The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round” as their torture-tune of choice.



Circle Four: The Cliché Spewers

The cliché spewers were unable to utilize creativity in their poetry. Instead they relied on recycling common metaphors and phrases. These poets lacked real emotion and originality, so they used clichéd figurative phrases and common ideas into their poems in hopes of fooling their readers. Ashley obviously blames them for the destruction of beauty in the English language, and feels that the endless repetition of certain thoughts renders them meaningless. So, ironically, their punishments are to become the clichés they once carelessly tossed about in life.


35 Here are the cliché spewers
 Walking around like zombies.
 Life was full of pain--
 It cut like a knife.
 These souls hurt deeply
40 And are bleeding,
 forever
 And ever
 Into oblivion.
 How they long to be set free,
45 To fly away like birds
 And see the sun again.
 But they are caged
 Because they lacked imagination.
 And this sits like a weight on their shoulder.
50 Their own evil has locked them up
 And thrown away the key.

Footnotes:
36. This is a reference to a XXDarkAngelaXX piece in with the phrase “like a zombie” is used three times over the course of two paragraphs.
43. “Into oblivion” is a very popular phrase that the cliché spewers use when they intend to intensify their poetry.


The Final Circle: The Pretentious.

This is the lowest division of Hell. The sinners here are the snobs of poetry. They write poetry that appears lovely but has no substance whatsoever. They are buried in a burning lake of cologne. After observing the sinners here with blatant disgust, Ashley and XXDarkAngelaXX begin their climb up a worn, splintery staircase which gradually becomes Langston Hughes’s “crystal stair” as Ashley draws closer to Poetic Heaven.


 Hark, what weary souls do dwell here.
 Rivulets of pain twist menacingly about them
 Their suffering is vast and quotidian,
55 Unprepossessing.
 No clemency exists
 For those who weave words
 Into ochre tapestries devoid of meaning.
 Wafts of flagrant fermentation
60 Invade and transcend the senses of the dead.
 Buried in blazing, wanton pools of foul cologne,
 they lie fruitlessly for all perpetuity.
 But then,
 Turning away,
65 I see a staircase
 Dilapidated and unpalatable.
 “Don’t fret,” says XXDarkAngelaXX
 This shall soon be a stair of crystal
 As we gingerly approach the divine light
70 Of our saviors.”
 And soon, emerging in a vast, glittering plane,
 The blanket that was the sky was visible
 And an implausible beam of light
 Spiraled down to guide us upwards,
75 To Heaven.

Footnotes:
61. Ashley chose to submerge the Pretentious in rank cologne because it is often disguised in a beautiful, misleading shiny bottle the same way their poem’s emptiness was disguised with elaborate, vivid language and vocabulary.