Playground taunts often involve imitation, and parody can be the most pointed of insults, so choose a poem that irks you or a good poem from a [insert profanity here] poet. In grad school, I had a poetry professor who hated William Blake and would read Blake’s poem’s in the voice of Bullwinkle (the Moose of the Squirrel and Moose duo). Fabulous. Here is a link to
For the first prompt, find a poem (or poet) you dislike and mock a poem to all your dark heart’s joy. Dance on those bloated stanzas, bonfire that crude rhyme scheme, shout down its narrator, delight in the destruction! Go all in.
More about this painting the artist Toulouse-Lautrec can be found at this link.
Not all parody is cruel in intent though. I felt utterly seen and loved when a friend of mine included me in a poem composed of lines in the style of local poets. I immediately knew my own lines without being named (I think she wrote “my” lines better than I do though).
A recent post featured deer in poems and linked William Stafford’s famous “Traveling Through the Dark.” Let’s look at Rae Armantrout’s parody of his poem with her “Traveling Through the Yard,” both of which are helpfully provided by the blog 32degrees.
So for the next prompt, choose a poem you love and parody it all in good fun. Try to keep to the original’s form as much as possible.
For a third prompt, take a famous poem and completely desecrate it. Perhaps switch its form to a limerick as Wendy Cope did in her “The Waste Land: Five Limericks.” Introduce cats, muppets or cartoon characters. Please check out Robert Wynne’s Museum of Parallel Art for more sample poems.
Go all in! Good luck!
