Bad Poetry: Nature's Cook

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, a.k.a. Mad Meg, was a seventeenth-century writer and amateur scientist with a profoundly odd style. She had bold aspirations and an indulgent husband, but was hampered by her sex. She's the author, among many other works, of This Blazing World, a feminist science fiction/fantasy work panned critically but evidencing much original thought.

Of the place of women she wrote, in Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655), "We are become like worms, that only live in the dull earth of ignorance, winding our selves sometimes out by the help of some refreshing rain of good education, which seldom is given us, for we are kept like birds in cages, to hop up and down in our houses, not suffered to fly abroad, to see the several changes of fortune, and the various humors, ordained and created by nature, and wanting the experience of nature, we must needs want the understanding and knowledge, and so consequently prudence, and invention of men."

Here's an offering from her first book of poems, 1653:

Nature's Cook

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

DEATH is the Cook of Nature; and we find
Meat drest severall waies to please her Mind.
Some Meates shee rosts with Feavers, burning hot,
And some shee boiles with Dropsies in a Pot.
Some for Gelly consuming by degrees,
And some with Ulcers, Gravie out to squeese.
Some Flesh as Sage she stuffs with Gouts, and Paines,
Others for tender Meat hangs up in Chaines.
Some in the Sea she pickles up to keep,
Others, as Brawne is sous'd, those in Wine steep.
Some with the Pox, chops Flesh, and Bones so small,
Of which She makes a French Fricasse withall.
Some on Gridirons of Calenture is broyl'd,
And some is trodden on, and so quite spoyl'd.
But those are bak'd, when smother'd they do dye,
By Hectick Feavers some Meat She doth fry.
In Sweat sometimes she stues with savoury smell,
A Hodge-Podge of Diseases tasteth well.
Braines drest with Apoplexy to Natures wish,
Or swimmes with Sauce of Megrimes in a Dish.
And Tongues she dries with Smoak from Stomack's ill,
Which as the second Course she sends up still.
Then Death cuts Throats, for Blood-puddings to make,
And puts them in the Guts, which Collicks rack.
Some hunted are by Death, for Deere that's red.
Or Stal-fed Oxen, knocked on the Head.
Some for Bacon by Death are Sing'd, or scal'd,
Then powdered up with Flegme, and Rhume that's salt.