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.
