Certainly possible, but I tend to think something else, assuming the quote is real. I think it’s literally about bad poetry. In the collective grief after the sinking, undoubtedly many people who were not and would never be professional poets attempted to write something in memoriam. Some of these were undoubtedly published in various papers. This blurb has the feel of a Twain or Bierce or especially a Mencken, where an educated cynic is calling out the earnest-but-unskilled for their lack of self-awareness in thinking they had a quality contribution to the public discussion.