Glossary Term of the Day:

Poetaster is a contemptuous name often applied to bad or inferior poets. Specifically, poetaster has implications of unwarranted pretentions to artistic value. The word was coined in Latin by Erasmus in 1521. It was first used in English by Ben Jonson in his 1600 play Cynthia's Revels; immediately afterwards Jonson chose it as the title of his 1601 play Poetaster.

The faults of a poetaster frequently include errors or lapses in their work's meter, badly rhyming words which jar rather than flow, oversentimentality, too much use of the pathetic fallacy and unintentionally bathetic (effusively or insincerely emotional) choice of subject matter.

A couple poets often regarded as poetasters are William Topaz McGonagall and Alfred Austin. The latter, despite having been a British poet laureate, is nevertheless regarded as greatly inferior to his predecessor, Alfred Lord Tennyson, was regularly mocked during his career, and is little read today.

See also doggerel.