In May, 2001, a frequent participant on the Gazebo, Whimsy, conducted a contest in which each submitted poem had to be derived from one famous poem in the voice of another poet who was not the author of the piece being parodied. Ms. Jennifer Reeser, Ms. Claudia Grinnell, and Mr. Fred Longworthy served as judges.
The complete set of poems is reproduced below for your amusement and edification. The poems are listed in order of their original entry.
Jim Hayes
My Papa’s Waltz by Stevie Smith
Nobody knew him my father
But still he kept waltzing
He was much more dated than he thought
And not real cool, but schmaltzy.
Poor dad, he always loved dancing
And now he’s dead,
A fox trot was too fast for him his heart gave way
They said.
Oh, no no no, don’t beat time in my head,
(his heart was still, no more flirting)
I was too slow all my life
And not dancing but hurting.
Chris George
Howl by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Even as I have seen the best-made best-laid minds of my generation
Buffeted by an ill-starred breeze like a windhover a-gliding
Down the windchaff chambers of time inexorable toward expiration,
As the quick-silver brains of my contemporaries are riding,
O Chevalier, I behold their faith inviolable, unbridling,
Racing toward my precious bejewelled Lady, I hear my heart sing,
Time-testifed! My peerless brothers will grasp the gold-clasped ring!
Ciaran Berry
Green Eggs and Ham (by Ted Hughes circa 1971)
Green egg-slime.
Pink ham, flesh of the pig
He'd seen knifed that morning,
Carried to the cutting-board in a black wheelbarrow.
Crow flew down,
Hungry, to the kitchen table.
Wiped blood from his black beak.
His eyes were pure genius:
A deepening, widening greenness
Brilliantly, concentratedly
Going about the business
Of eating breakfast…
Cutlery scratched white porcelain.
Crow mouthed, laughed, wretched,
Spat out the food
And asked for porridge…
Watson
The Red Wheelbarrow by John Ashbery
The Rhone flows from the Alps to its mouth, the latter a shout of caberet girls,
the former -- well, the former, the precedent, a babble of ice for a thousand barges,
the way they write piano songs standing up, the whole world on the back of a turtle, but without the wheels and chased through the streets filled with tomatoes
which never get the rain they deserve anyway – that’s God on a month-end budget again, use it or lose it, down it comes but who’d have guessed
the feathers? The strut of the old ladies with their wrinkled skin? The squawking?
Wes Hyde
Sonnet II by Don Marquis, or
Don Marquis Rewrites Shakespeare’s Sonnet II
mahitabel the cat
recently left the company
of a ragged eared tom cat
who was once francois villon
i told her someday
she would regret it
that she wouldnt always be young
but she just said wotthehell wotthehell
i sing my wild free tune
under the blear eyed moon
toujours gai archy toujours gai
i told her she should have at least
had a litter of kittens
so she could see her beauty
in her progenies
and have comfort when shes old
i know about these things
because im an educated cockroach
Jim Hayes
Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood by Ernest Slyman
Two roads went yellowing around a wood
and sorry that the sky travelled both
I oddly fell as a red chrome bicycle stood
where the skulls of seven babies could
be kicked around by the tongues of old men in the undergrowth.
During the Chi’n Dynasty I took the fair
rhinoceros-scented comic Zen claim
because it was plumed, piquant, gastric and wanted wear
though as for that, the pausing there
had worn the dead carcase of a sponge cake just the same.
And both that meandering morn equally lay
as the scorched sun blundered each step black,
Yes in deed I stirred the wild dog for another day,
till commonsense died and went away
and entered the grave queerly on its back.
Jesus knows I shall be telling everyone this as they sigh
until secula seculorum and all times hence;
rude toads yellowed in a divert’s wood, and I—
I took the one that gave me the eye,
not that it made much difference.
Ciaran Berry
The Lovesong of John Joseph Doherty --Seamus Heaney
Let us go then, myself and yourself,
While the haws are blazing red in the late sun,
And the yellow whuns
Are shining, like the torch that Diogenes
Lifted looking for one just man,
Along the green mulch banks of the Bann
Where perch arch in question marks,
Hang on the brink
Of meaning, probe wee stones,
Test cold water and rock.
Let us go with Joe Brodsky and Derek Walcott.
Patrick Kavanagh comes and goes,
With a basket full of sloes.
The Derry fog that rubs its back over the alders.
The chimney smoke that rubs its snout over the alders.
Lashes its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingers in rippling pools that stand in bog.
Let fall upon its back, the soot from a black smith's shop
Sluices through air, makes a sudden leap,
And seeing that it's a clear October night
Curls about a haystack and falls asleep.
And there'll be a time
For the smoke from Bellaghy homesteads
Rubbing its back like a plough-horse on light
And there'll be a time
To meet Mrs. Keenan, a blind neighbor, and the Scullions.
And there'll be a time to cherish and bless
And time to divine words out of water,
time to answer questions with a rhyme
And time for mulled wine, whiskey, vodka,
Before any black tea or brown bread.
Patrick Kavanagh comes and goes,
With his basket full of sloes.
frank
excerpt from Song of Myself -- Charles Simic
I celebrate Charles Simic
In a rundown tenement.
St. Veronica has a word or two
On the subject when she is not
Eating spiders in her martyrdom.
I contorte and invite my leg, the one chopped
Off the body by a blade of summer grass.
My tongue lingers more
And more on my beginnings:
Born near a crystal ball, a dog
Outside pissing on a lamp post.
A psychic forecasting the number
Of stroke victims who will need
A good, clean shave.
Terese Coe
The Snow Leopard (Peter Matthiessen) by Federico Garcia Lorca
Lhasa.
Too high, too late.
Roan burro, silver glacier,
and my burro won't let me ride.
Although I get cardiac arrest,
I'll never reach the top of the 19,000-foot pass.
Over the crevasse, over the four-inch ledge,
roan burro, dead Mallory.
Death is looking at me
from the eyes of the yeti.
Ay! This murderous pass!
Ay! My kicking donkey!
Ay! That he should kick me while I lie here
before I reach Lhasa.
Lhasa.
Too high, too late.
frank
from Howl, by Sharon Olds
I saw the best part of my father bathed in the morning and covered with a sheet from the waist down.
Carolyn Moore
W. Stevens’ "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" as a Collaborative Revision in Alternating Sections by C.D. Wright & Jelaluddin Rumi (the latter channeled by Coleman Barks)
I
Among twenty snowy mountains. Among twenty. A Hmong.
Did you see that. It was one of those followers
of what’s-his-face that throws birds in cars at stoplights.
Did you catch what popped out. The eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds, each conscious of itself!
Like a tree stripped to become what it truly is,
a tree where three blackbirds sing,"Bliss!"
III
The blackbird whirled. Blackbird world. Blackened bird, whorled.
Deepstep baby. My family loves cream corn. Pantomime.
IV
A man and woman are one
candle and the moth crazy around it.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
are one small fig from a random tree.
V
I do not know which. Not know Witch. Not NO.
Beauty of inflections: kingdom of cling peaches, fireworks, red ants.
Or beauty of innuendoes. Can you name the four areas of surrender.
The blackbird whistling. Lights out baby. Or just after.
VI
Joyful icicles filled the window.
All ice thinks only of this chance.
The shadow of the blackbird visits
like a Sufi, all eye and spiritual breathing,
his mood traced in that shadow,
an indecipherable hiccup.
VII
O thin men of Possum Holler. O thin mints of Possibility.
Why do you imagine self-conscious Southern poetry,
preposterous as a wedding dress. Do you not see how the blackbird
suffers from what Wittgenstein calls aspect blindness.
Images may be either real or virtual. Hush, hogs, hush.
VIII
I know noble ditties
and lucid, inescapable spinning tops,
but the pulse and I know, too,
that the blackbird caws, "Don’t theorize
about pure essence!"
IX
When the blackbird flew. Wind. The black. Bird flu.
Outta sight. That was a helluva note. Come my sultry refulgence.
Salvation. Don’t leave earth without it. One of many circles.
X
At the sound of blackbirds
dervishing in green desire,
even the bawds of gloom
would squeal their envy.
XI
He rode over Hog Waste Lagoon. He wrote over Hog Waste.
Listen awhile. The white piano misses the blackbird. Once,
a fear pierced him in the store, voices emanating from the shelves.
In that he mistook Poetry. West of Rome is Poetry. Poetry, Georgia.
Wonder who lives there. Besides Pattycake and blackbirds.
XII
The river is praising!
The blackbird must be whooping more bliss.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon. Evening all. Even in Gaul.
It was snowing and it was going to snow. Onionlight. That’s right.
Vidalia onions. Onlionlove. All of this mystery, mystery, mystery.
Blackbird sat, opaque and revelatory, in his hitherworld of cedar-limbs.
Kenny A. Chaffin
A Blackbird Came Down the Walk
By Langston Hughes
The Negro came down the cotton row
The boss-man did not see
He sipped cool water from the ladle
And wished that he were free
He chopped along the cotton row
With boss-man lookin' on
A snake slipped quietly 'neath the leaves
He let it slide on by
He glanced around with rapid eyes
Wonderin' where ol' John could be
Beads of sweat rolled down black brow
A whippin' he'd soon see
frank
excerpt from Paradise Lost (Book One), by Charles Bukowski
the Almighty's got a little
too much sugar for me,
too much melo-
dramatic bravado
whenever He bends to look
down from the balcony
in the movie theatre.
of course, the Glorious enterprise --
Gabriel, Uriel, Allen Tate, Vietnam, every one
of those snob cocksuckers of the blood
of Life -- they play ping pong
with the Dickey boys. they con men
out of their souls. they leap
together in the center of the room
and kiss and ream and kiss and feel
each other's degrees and providence
and publication credits and pull wings
off flies and all that popcorn.
i have been cool all my life, even
before getting thrown down
through the school yards
and into the alleys with winos
and the years i was something
which is all right with me.
i almost like it, being alone
here and now, a woman
in the john flushing the toilet.
my little wooden cross.
sure. and yours.
after the clearing of one war,
pump up another, a nightmare
train always ready to run
off the tracks; i ride along
hoping for one more
beer in a peeling kitchen.
Jennifer Reeser
The Kingfisher
by Louise Glück
They claimed that
within a year
the nightingales' noise drowned out sleep.
Hear this: these opening arrangements
are only tapestries in the eyes,
entanglements.
And months later, there shall be
an intermission in a downtown pub,
in which one of the nightingales
will be found breathless.
And the other, acting the role of philistine,
will be found skeptical,
pounding holes in Stravinsky.
Nobody will answer
that scream afterwards in the Bronx Zoo.
They shall walk on,
accusatory perhaps,
in their apathy.
Look at them: him moaning,
"The poetry is gone,"
her quailing at his shaking hands,
his hands sobered into the pain of age.
And by morning another fifth will die.
They will wander a downtown graveyard
like a symptomatic datum of death.
The holistic choirs,
the noise of Christendom
will pour over Wall Street.
And many years from now in a foreign land,
she will not be able to say
how much confusion lingered.
The kingfisher will fall, burnished.
A type of flaming kinship
will pierce her memory:
passion illuminating grief.
Carolyn Moore
A Hamlet Soliloquy by Dorothy Parker
To be, or not to be:
that is the niggle.
Which is the nobler?
to suffer or giggle?
To sleep perchance to dream?
If therein’s the rub,
‘might as well sip gin
and drown in the tub.
Mortal coil, whips and scorns,
bare bodkin and more—
this pale cast of thought
marks a deadly bore.
Terese Coe
I'm glad to announce the uncovering of several new verses of Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno. As channeled to my brain by unknown forces of nature.
He thought he saw a brigantine
kowtowing to a swell:
he looked again and found it was
a runny Neuchatel.
"But this is what I need," he said,
"I've still some Zinfandel."
He thought he saw a coat-of-arms
perform a pas de deux:
he looked again and found it was
a rutting caribou.
"I didn't join the dance," he said,
"as I don't know kung fu."
He thought he saw Queen Guinevere
sauteeing escargots:
he looked again and found it was
a game of tic-tac-toe.
"Embarrassed as I was," he said,
I blew the row of O."
He thought he saw a Zapotec
conducting a quartet:
he looked again and found it was
a videocassette.
"I have no VCR," he said,
"There's no electric yet."
He thought he saw a frankfurter
delivering a wall:
he looked again and found it was
his phenobarbital.
"There's no AA just yet," he said,
but screw the alcohol."
Betty N. Buckman
I've Got To Be Serious
A. P. Herbert
I study newspapers until the day's end
but find no solution. It seems to depend.
And when the rank details couldn't be grosser
I switch to the sports page to read about Sosa.
Take Ecology -
quite important to me
For grave, sober comment on Ecology
a young tongue-pierced sage
says, "Look in - New Age."
It's not all the rage now, you see.
M E Hope
The Tyger by Matsuo Basho
The tyger brushed
by snow turns
to admire his fleece.
Betty N. Buckman
I Wandered Ghostly as a Shroud
Edna St Vincent Millay
I hovered ghostly, like a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a shroud
Descend and cloak the daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Smothering, choking every breeze.
Continuous as dead stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Dear, once alive - now perished plants.
The waves beside them danced, but where
Had skipped these sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but despair
In such discordant company:
I gazed - and gazed and thought - and thought
How sweet the bloom Death's soldiers bought.
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with piercing dread
Grows still as daffodils, quite dead.
Ciaran Berry
God's Grandeur By Philip Larkin
He doesn't bloody well exist. Sunday;
The superstitious wake and go to church.
They need God like the cripple needs a crutch,
But nothing ever happens, though they pray.
The Parson drones. An old man bends his head,
Folds his hands and kneels down in the pew,
Bows before the cross, forgets to rue
His life's missed chances. Soon he will be dead.
Watson
The Owl and The Pussycat
by Agha Shahid Ali
In a lentil-green boat that was wrong for the sea,
they brought honey and money along to the sea.
With his smallish guitar, Owl strummed love to Pussy,
as her silence subtracted the song of the sea.
Owl then bartered a ring from the pig on the shore,
slipped the gold round her paw and rowed strong to the sea.
He wore grays and a morning coat right for the night.
She waxed tropical - wore a sarong on the sea.
They held hands on the beach, ate with runcible spoons,
Pastor Turkey made haste, a furlong from the sea.
Between minces and quinces, they offered their vows,
and the light on the waves made them long for the sea.
The moon lit their dancing, the stars their embrace,
but the pull of their love was too strong for the sea.
What's on earth may reside in a child's reverie,
but the tales of love's whimsy belong to the sea.
Jim Hayes
Annus Mirabilis
by William Butler Yeats
Sexual intercourse began
in a green field by the sea
between the Fiddler of Dooney
all the Magillicuddy clan
Crazy Jane and me.
Up till then there’d only been
a sort of wondering
by Ossian and Aengus
about Leda and the swan
that spread to everything.
With master Caesar doing the same;
the emperors drunken soldiery abed,
the girls at puberty all game
near the beehives behind the shed
was Faeryland to blame?
So life was never better then
in The Lake Isle of Inisfree
with Maud gone
with the Magillicuddy clan--
and only Crazy Jane and me.
Chris George
Annus Horriblus
by Queen Elizabeth II
Someone left Windsor Castle out in the flames,
Di and Charles are on the skids.
The sun has forever set, nothing seems the same,
Even my footman tells me fibs.
Fergie's hawking weight reduction on the tube,
The corgis are whining to be fed,
Philip drives his horse and cart, he's such a boob,
I simply can't wait till Sophie and Edward wed!
Betty N. Buckman
The Chambered Nautilus
- Basho
Drift beneath a world
where the vast eternity
silently echoes.
Colleen Russell
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
- Clark Coolidge
"Hope" feathers things, soul-perched and sings
the tune without words. All stops, never
Gale-sweet. I heard the sore storming.
Abash the Bird. Your little kept many. Warm.
No one knew how...
I've heard it in the chillest land. Strange
crumbs, asked in Extremity. They sweat Sea.