Okay! We’ve got “erasure poetry,” in which some ninny blacks out or otherwise deletes words and phrases from a poem that somebody else wrote, to produce a new poem which looks very like gibberish. But if you can make new poems by taking stuff out of old ones, which not create new poems by putting something… in?
Voila! Insertion poetry! Like so:
Jack and Jill went [off to Brazil]/ to fetch a [poisonous tree frog]/ Jack [climbed a tree] and broke his [knee],/ and Jill came tumbling [onto a wart hog].
Gee, it’s sort of like Mad Libs without the blanks. It works with prose, too:
Fourscore and seven years ago, our [capitalist warmongers] brought forth a new [chicken coop], conceived in [J.P. Morgan’s private office] and dedicated to [cut-throat business practices] and [unrestrained drunkenness]…
This is bound to catch on at every university and college in America. Shall I compare thee to a [bowl of watery oatmeal]? Presto! Shakespeare’s poem is now your poem! It does wonders for the self-esteem.
Just goes to show ya: our intellectuals never run out of really dumb ideas.
We used to play this kind of game when I was in college. I remember one of my crowd writing a whole song based on the opening (altered of course) lines, “I get no kick from [shampoo], / [Licorice pie] doesn’t thrill me at all….”
Or we’d pick out a word and insert it into song or movie titles. One word I remember was “braciola.” So… “Three braciole in the fountain,” “I love a braciola,” “How much is that braciola in the window,” “It’s been a long, long braciola,” and so on.
Funny how these sillinesses stick in one’s mind — or, rather, resurface in one’s mind — after so many years.
They are there to keep us sane.
Is this for real?
What do you think?