Bad poetry

So Slate is celebrating National Poetry Month by:

presenting each week a poem that is about poetry from a viewpoint that is in one way or another negative: more sour than sweet. Another goal will be to avoid the best-known poems about poetry: no chestnuts allowed.

In service of that goal, this week they're presenting the following wonderful example from Su Tung-p'o, an 11th century poet from China, who has better things to do than read bad poetry:

READING THE POETRY OF MENG CHAO
By Su Tung-p'o, translated by Burton Watson

Night: reading Meng Chao's poems,
characters fine as a cow's hair.
By the cold lamp, my eyes blur and swim.
Good passages I rarely find—
lone flowers poking up from the mud—
but more hard words than the Odes or Li sao—
jumbled rocks clogging the clear stream,
making rapids too swift for poling.
My first impression is of eating little fishes—
what you get's not worth the trouble;
or of boiling tiny mud crabs
and ending up with some empty claws.
For refinement he might compete with monks
but he'll never match his master Han Yh.
Man's life is like morning dew,
a flame eating up the oil night by night.
Why should I strain my ears
listening to the squeak of this autumn insect?
Better lay aside the book
and drink my cup of jade-white wine.