A Wild Garden of Verses

This is Bob Newman's poetry parodies site. While my verse forms site is supposed to be educational, this one is purely for fun. Not quite all the items here are verse parodies; I have no excuse for including the Hemingway story, except that people have found it funny. Where (as in most cases) the parody is based on a particular poem, I have given that poem's name in the right-hand column.

Poet Title of parody Title of original poem (if any)
W H Auden O what am I buying? O where are you going?
Hilaire Belloc Superstring Theory Henry King
John Betjeman Burgh Heath  
William Blake Hamster, Hamster   Tyger, Tyger
G K Chesterton The Shamus   The Donkey
John Clare Little Dotty Poet   Little Trotty Wagtail
e e cummings e e c   anyone lived in a pretty how town
T S Eliot The Journal of the Santas   The Journey of the Magi
Ernest Hemingway The Froth Also Rises (prose)  
Gerard Manley Hopkins Limp Little Lyric
Motorway

Inversnaid
Ted Hughes Cat - published in Cats Behaving Badly (Barnes & Noble, New York, 2000)  
Rudyard Kipling If If
Frank Kuppner A Bad Day for the Kuppner Dynasty A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty
John Lennon/Paul McCartney Yestersocks Yesterday
Louis MacNeice Bagpipe Encore   Bagpipe Music
John Masefield Road Rage Sea Fever
Roger McGough/Brian Patten Little Johnny's Other Confession Little Johnny's Confession, Let me die a youngman's death, etc
John Milton On his patrons' kindness On his blindness
Ogden Nash Money for Old Rope (or, Give him an inch and he'll lose the metre)  
Henry Reed Integration by Parts Naming of Parts
Robert W Service The Writing of Frank McHugh The Shooting of Dan McGrew
William Shakespeare Sonnet
MacPhail
The Bradford Bard
(‘Appen, an’ ‘appen not/The next day, and the next day, and the next/Eh up, lads, come, let’s gie it one more go!)
Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
MacBeth, scenes from Act 1 with the three witches
Hamlet, "To be, or not to be?";
Macbeth, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"; 
Henry V 
before Harfleurs, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends"
Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy's Progress Ozymandias
Dylan Thomas Do not sleep sober or alone this night   Do not go gentle into that good night
Edward Thomas Traffic Stop Adlestrop
R S Thomas In the Clan On the Farm
C K Williams Breakfast  
Hank Williams Your Chitin Heart Your Cheatin' Heart
John Hartley Williams Albion   Canada, Hungarian
William Carlos Williams I just couldn't resist This is just to say

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© Bob Newman 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. All rights reserved.

This page last updated 27/02/2007