[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Folks,

I am collecting good parodies of great poems for a survey of English and American literature I'm teaching (1750- present day). I've found quite a few online, such as G.K. Chesterton's hilarious spoof of Walt Whitman (I'll post it below), but am thinking that many of you have ones you wouldn't mind sharing with the students. If so, please post them below!

Best, Tony

G. K. Chesterton pretending to be Walt Whitman
This is the third section in Chesterton’s poem “Variations on an Air,” which is first a parody of Tennyson, then of Yeats, and then of Whitman:

Me clairvoyant,
Me conscious of you, old camarado,
Needing no telescope, lorgnette, field-glass, opera-glass, myopic pince-nez,
Me piercing two thousand years with eye naked and not ashamed;
The crown cannot hide you from me,
Musty old feudal-heraldic trappings cannot hide you from me,
I perceive that you drink.
(I am drinking with you. I am as drunk as you are.)
I see you are inhaling tobacco, puffing, smoking, spitting
(I do not object to your spitting),
You prophetic of American largeness,
You anticipating the broad masculine manners of these States;
I see in you also there are movements, tremors, tears, desire for the melodious,
I salute your three violinists, endlessly making vibrations,
Rigid, relentless, capable of going on for ever;
They play my accompaniment; but I shall take no notice of any accompaniment
I myself am a complete orchestra.
So long.

And here is Annie Finch on some other Whitman parodies: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/har...itman-parodies

[RCL]

Emily to Walt

O vatic Walt, you loom so large—
A One-Man multitude—
An Ark—an overflowing Barge
Of Infinitude!

O Walt of whitecaps, Waves of Words—
My Quaint small vessels, tightly
Measured, sail in minor worlds,
But yours—through cyclones—Mighty.

O Skipper Walt! You sing of bathers—
Lovers and beloved—
Frolicking near sandy shores,
All welcomed—none refused.

O Walt, who shouts the Yes of Being
From your Mainmast’s top—
I can’t contain my Querying
Of your—Barbaric—Yawp!



Walt to Emily

O Emily, anomaly, you sing There is no frigate like a book,
And, Exultation is the going / Of an inland soul to sea!

Please climb aboard the good ship Whitman. . . .set sail
From home. . . . Song of Myself your chart and sextant.

Though recluse you have, methinks, imagined Wild nights!
In roiling seas. . . .When your life had stood a loaded gun?

Discharge! Load your lungs with earth and sun to yelp and yawp
Of cherished freedoms. . . . shoot truth straight, not slant!

You survey what I see, my macroscopic views. . . . beneath
Your microscopic lens! My ocean is your dusty pond. . . .
Is that gaze a squint?

Closer I approach you, Em. . . .breathing into, warming ears,
teasing, whispering, “With widened eyes, you’d see the oceanic
swells and surges. . . .feel Spirit pulsing, pummeling our senses.”

Ah, you note my eight and twenty bathers, men and women. Are you,
Sweet Emily-of-empathy, the twenty-ninth? Splashing, frolicking
Intermingling limbs with us. . . .but dry behind your cabin’s porthole?

Dive! Brave the floods of flesh. . . . waves of blood, currents of souls,
Submerge, merge, emerge. . . .See that my craft, like yours, is true.
Hear me. Dive in and play.

I will exult in you. . . .


from Amsterdam Quarterly and later in Ghost Trees

per his 1855, first edition, using ellipsis throughout

[Roger Slater]

An Irish Chicken Avoids Her Death

I think that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere beyond the yellow line;
Those that I flee I do not hate
Though they would wash me down with wine;
I hope they will not feel the loss,
Nor do I wish to leave them poor,
But when I found a road to cross
I knew that I could stay no more.
Nor rice, nor gravy bade my flight,
Nor barbecues, nor marinades,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove my fear of sharpened blades;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
It seemed a shame to die as meat,
And so I left the farm behind,
And that is why I crossed the street.

[Roger Slater]

THE CROSSING
with apologies to Theodore Roethke

I cross the street, and try not to be slow.
I am a chicken with a chicken’s fear.
The farmer ate my mother. Time to go.

We live by running. What is there to know?
They seized my mom and cut her ear to ear.
I cross the street, and try not to be slow.

Of those who guard the hen house, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall run swiftly there.
The farmer ate my mother. Time to go.

We yearn to flee; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm and I make quite a pair.
I cross the street, and try not to be slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; but slaughter is not fair.
The farmer ate my mother. Time to go.

This running makes me nervous. I should know.
What roasts my skin is always. And is near.
I cross the street, and try not to be slow.
The farmer ate my mother. Time to go.

[Roger Slater]

THE WEB IS TOO MUCH WITH US

The Web is too much with us, late and soon.
Clicking and sending, we lay waste our powers.
Little we see in cyberspace that’s ours.
We have given our blogs away, a sordid boon.
This browser that consumes our afternoon,
This screen at which we sit for countless hours
Googling aimlessly through birds and flowers,
Our speakers blaring some downloaded tune,
They move us not. — Great God! I’d rather be
A luddite suckled in some chipless bourne
So might I, far from plastic mouse or key,
Dismiss the Worldwide Web with holy scorn,
Not click on every banner ad I see
Or spend my days and nights exploring porn.

[Erik Olson]

Kim and ISIS

Some say the world will end with Kim,
Some say with ISIS.
From what I’ve heard of Jong-un’s whim
I hold with those who favor him.
But if it perished twice from crisis,
I know enough of maddened hate
To say that for destruction ISIS
Is also great
And sure suffices.
f

[RCL]

Arse Poetica

Epics chart a culture’s mind
in sprawls of history and wit—
their redolence rides passing winds.

The lyrics are much smaller songs
leaking just a little wind
perfuming feelings as they’re sung.

Dramatic verse can be perverse,
digest the major characters’ wind,
their offal odors at times a curse.

An Arse Poetica, an art,
releases powerful aromas
as contrails of a horse's fart.

Symbol of a poem’s source,
it's Pegasus, of course of course.

[Jim Hayes]

Song to Celia
After Ben Jonson

Drink to me with thine only eye
I’m trying to focus mine
to take a swig from out my cup
thou cyclopian Valentine.
This thirst that in thy soul doth lie
is slaked with Spanish wine,
I will of Jose’s nectar sup
and fill my glass from thine.

I sent thee late a dainty box,
not as a costly treat,
but bars of soap as feeling they
would help thee wash thy feet.
But thou didst only wash thy socks
and sent them on to me,
since when they grow and smell all day
not of themselves but thee.

Drink to me with thine only eye.
Off weed yer sayin’? Goodbye.

[Michael Cantor]

Hey - welcome back!

[Martin Elster]

Greetings, Jim!

Do Hasty Harm

A voice arose among the melting
crystals on the boughs—
an aged feline that was belting
out great sad meows.
He had good cause for moaning so,
for he could not climb down
to the mucky slush and yellow snow
that overspread the town.

What was he doing on that tree,
not being crow or thrush?
He caroled in a sour key.
I wanted him to hush.
Leaning upon the coppice gate
in the weakening eye of day,
I aimed my shotgun at him straight
and let the pellets spray.

______________________

Parody of “The Darkling Thrush.”
The title is an anagram of Thomas Hardy.

(Appeared in The Spectator.)