Talk:The Tay Bridge Disaster

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A fact from this article was used in the "Did you know" section of Portal:Trains on 2008-05-24.

"MacGonagall's unique poetic talent". Surely you jest. But keep it up, great stuffPing 11:06 29 May 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Wow

I'd always heard that McGonagall was bad, but I had no idea just bad. I haven't laughed so much in ages. Gosh. Maccoinnich 02:58, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, could we have a native Dundee Scottish speaker read the poem? With all due respect, the current reader sounds a bit too south of England to me. --212.56.114.4 18:39, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Who say's his bad? We need proof people. I like him! Seriously. He's a good poet. We need citable proof from people with renowed poetic knwoledge that he's bad.

Hear, hear! I think he's a great poet! Gorovich 18:08, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think sources would be very difficult to find for those interested enough to search for them—I'm not one of them. This geocities-hosted bibliography[1] might be a start. Searching Google, Google Scholar, etc, informally confirms that he is indeed widely regarded as the worst or at least very bad, even though I haven't dug up specific sources. And I concur. His poetry is essentially prose, broken up into lines that rhyme. EldKatt (Talk) 18:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Well T S Elliott wrote poetry of prose broken into lines too, as Lord Alfred Douglas said in a talk shortly before he died! Hugo999 01:42, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The other two bridge poems

The references were mistakenly removed as vandalism. Restoring as per http://www.ciao.co.uk/William_McGonagall__Review_5333446 confirming existence. Maurog 09:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The order of presentation for the other two poems made it seem that both poems predated the bridge collapse, with the "New Bridge" poem written first. According to the book Very Bad Poetry, the "New Bridge" poem was written to commemorate the rebuilding of the bridge, hence the importance of it being able to defy strong winds. I have changed the order and added a short explanation. I think that fact makes the whole thing even more hilarious. Katherine Tredwell 00:17, 30 September 2007 (UTC)