Happy Monday, dear reader, as I sit behind the Dissolute Desk in the Safe House.  Today we raise a glass (or a bottle, or hell, a whole goddamn keg) to two wildly different but equally audacious moments in the annals of literary history.

First up, 1958.  The year Vladimir Nabokov unleashed Lolita on unsuspecting American readers, a book so incendiary it might was well have come with a warning label: “Caution: May cause apoplectic pearl clutching, moral outrage, and existential crises.”  This novel was a bunker-buster of prose hurled directly at the glass house of societal norms.  Nabokov, that sly, butterfly-chasing bastard, took the English language, bent it over his knee, and spanked it into submission.  The result was a story about Humbert Humbert, a man so charmingly vile you almost forget he’s the literary equivalent of a trainwreck you can’t turn away from.

But here’s the thing: Lolita is a masterpiece because it doesn’t give a damn what you think.  It exists on its own terms, unapologetic and unflinching, like a middle finger raised to the heavens.  And that, dear reader, is the kind of literary badassery I still aspire to.

Now, let’s pivot from the sublime to the ridiculous, because August 18 is also National Bad Poetry Day.  Indeed, a whole day dedicated to the art of writing poetry so atrocious it makes your high school emo phase look like Shakespeare.  This is the day we celebrate the cringeworthy couple, the mangled metaphor, the rhyme so forced it might as well be wearing a ski mask.  And I find a great deal of shabby glory in the whole thing.

Because bad poetry is the ultimate act of rebellion against the pretentious gatekeepers of “serious” literature.  And let’s face it, modern American poetry is almost universally shit, and has been for decades.  Bad Poetry Day is basically a day we get to drop the façade and quit pretending verse has been anything but dreck and dross for most of your lifetimes, even if it took the poet years to finish the poem.  It’s a reminder that writing doesn’t always have to be profound or polished or Pulitzer-worthy.  Sometimes, it’s enough to just let the words spill out, messy and imperfect and gloriously human.  So go ahead, write that haiku about your cat’s ass.  Pen that sonnet to your morning hangover.  Embrace the absurdity, because bad poetry is proof that even when we fail, we’re still creating.  And that, dear reader, is always a victory worth celebrating.

So here, then, is a truly bad poem from yrs. truly about Nabokov’s Lolita, just to show you how it’s done.

Oh, Lolita, you scandalous book,
With Humbert’s gaze, so creepy it shook.
A tale of obsession, taboo, and despair,
But mostly just Humbert being a nightmare.
Your prose is like butter, so smooth and divine,
But the subject?  Shit.  It Crosses The Line.
A nymphet, he calls her, with a wink and a grin,
But we all know, bro, that’s a helluva sin.
Butterflies flutter, metaphors soar,
But Humbert, my dude, you’re rotten to the core.
Nabokov, you genius, you wordsmith supreme,
Why’d you make us root for this fever dream?
So here’s to Lolita, both brilliant and grim,
A literary masterpiece…about him.
It’s art, it’s scandal, it’s a moral grenade,
And now I need a shower.  Pass the Kool-Aid.

Yowza.  That is truly shit.  Doesn’t get much worse than that.  Or does it?  If you think you can do worse, dear reader, by all means…this is the day to let it fly.

So here’s to August 18, a day that reminds us why we fell in love with words in the first place.  Whether it’s Nabokov’s razor-sharp prose or a dirty limerick so bad it makes your teeth hurt, today is the day to revel in the chaos, the beauty, and the sheer audacity of literature.

Cheers.

N.P.: “Carry On” – Mr. Strange