Andrew at Philosophical Poetry took up my gauntlet and named one: Emily Dickinson, an unquestionably great poet who published almost nothing in her lifetime. By golly she really is an exception that proves the rule — "proves" in its old sense of "tests."
And the rule passes, I think.
Dickinson wrote a lot of poetry, and a lot of it is damned bad, no better than the Mary Oliver poem Kasey almost defended. Here are a couple found by opening her Complete Poems roughly in the middle:
703
Out of sight? What of that?
See the Bird — reach it!
Curve by Curve — Sweep by Sweep —
Round the Steep Air —
Danger! What is that to Her?
Better ’tis to fail — there —
Than debate — here —
Blue is Blue — the World through—
Amber — Amber — Dew — Dew —
Seek — Friend — and see —
Heaven is shy of Earth — that’s all —
Bashful Heaven — thy Lovers small —
Hide — too — from thee —
705
Life, and Death, and Giants —
Such as These — are still —
Minor — Apparatus — Hopper of the Mill —
Beetle at the Candle —
Or a Fife's Fame —
Maintain — by Accident that they proclaim —
Neither I nor anyone else knows whether she considered either of that pair to be a finished poem, but I offer in evidence that you can't sing them to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." It may be the case that we wouldn't have some of her great, nearly miraculous poems if she had worked harder at getting published, and my life would be the poorer for that, but Christ that book's a slog. It's a wonderful thing that there are good selected editions of her work, and I think better editors than Higginson might well have induced more of the miracles, and would certainly have spared us many of the failures.
7:53:06 PM 
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