An Editor's Brutal Critique of Bad Poetry
A local poet brings his manuscript to the P-I office, only to have his work butchered by an editor with a cynical, practical sense of humor.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An amateur poet came into the office with a manuscript. He began to recite a poem about a maiden braiding a wreath of yellow hair. The editor interrupted, 'That won't jibe with the tone of this paper,' and suggested rewriting it to be about a maiden pulling a hair out of the butter. When the poet offered a stanza about the stars and the power of love, the editor insisted it be changed to, 'While thinking of Mike, who was often beside her, She turned around and stepped in the spider.' The poet, seeing his work destroyed by the editor's practical views, soon took his departure.
“That won't jibe with the tone of this paper.”
This vignette offers a rare glimpse into the personality and editorial voice of 19th-century newspapers. It highlights the sharp, irreverent, and often abrasive gatekeeping that characterized the 'yellow journalism' era, where editors felt entitled to reshape reality—and bad poetry—to suit their own cynical standards.
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