Customer Reviews

Unauthorized Versions: Poems and Their Parodies

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I got tremendous joy from this book on the first reading, but have found myself returning to it less and less. Most of the parodies are wonderful, some are tedious. The question one occasionally must ask is: what is the point of parodying something not worth reading in the first place? A lot of cleverness and poetic skill though and most of the originals are worth at least one perusal. The supreme highlight for me was the parody of "Macavity, The Mystery Cat" by TS Elliot, which is a hilarious poem to start with. The parody is "The Accounting Cat" and should not be missed. Well if you feel reading poetry is getting too stodgy, lighten things up with this one.

Unauthorized Versions should be on the shelf of anyone reading poetry extensively - it serves as a reminder that poetry is a form of entertaining communication. The volume conveniently places a poem and its parody side by side. The parodies are excellent not doggeral.

Shakespeare's Macbethian witches now, thanks to Barbara Roe, "Into concret mixer throw / Brick from shoddy bungalow".

Gerard Manley Hopkin's "Glory be to God for dappled things" becomes Stanley J. Sharpless' "Glory be to God for Hopkin's verse"

Kilmer's "I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree" becomes Tom Disch's "I think that I shall never read / A tree of any shape or breed".

If this volume doesn't bring a smile to the dourest, self-described member of the poetic intelligensia, they are beyond hope.