Leigh Harrison / Books, Publications

Parodies & Satires

Leigh Harrison has been writing all her life and has also spent many decades writing poems and songs in the styles of other poets and songwriters.

As an undergrad in CUNY, one of her professors in American Poetry knew that she occasionally performed song parodies, and he offered her the opportunity to do a unique senior thesis. While the rest of the class was required to write lengthy analyses of poets they'd studied and their style, her professor felt she was already very adept at analyzing writing. He offered her the chance to test her ability by writing IN THE STYLE OF the poets they'd studied. He suggested that it would be a much harder assignment than it might seem at first, but after considering -- and realizing how difficult and challenging (and how much fun) it would actually be -- Leigh decided to accept the assignment.

Those poems became the basis for Leigh's first poetry collection, "Tour de Farce," which included poem parodies, satires, and original humorous poems by Leigh. Some of these parodies are on the website page for her book, "Tour de Farce," and some are below.

Interestingly, one of the poems in the style of Robert Frost so perfectly captured his style, vocabulary, syntax, moods, and format that her professor decided she must have found an obscure poem by Frost he didn't know, and that she'd secretly added it to her original work. When he investigated and found it was NOT part of Frost's collected work, he decided she had done a masterful job of analyzing and writing. She got an A+ on her thesis and -- again, Leigh used several of those poems as the basis for her first poetry collection, published in 1996, "Tour de Farce."

NUMBER 1776 (Telegrams to Infinity)

These are not – Letters – that I’ve sent
While you – interpret – what I’ve meant –
Nor Memories – nor silent Prayers –
 Nor Whispers – heard – on creaking Stairs –

The crackle of – the telegraph Wire –
Must here convey – my Heart’s desire –
For each – staccato – Dash – I drop –
Is but – my Mind’s own – urgent – STOP –

NUMBER 1777

I watched the Stars – that burn so bright –
From out my Window – late last Night –
They shone upon – the darkened Hill –
As I leaned on – my Windowsill –

The pale Moon turned – its ghostly gaze –
Where sheltering Trees – and Wild Deer graze –
Time’s careless Hands – enfold us all –
Through summer – winter – spring – and fall –

But Shadows fall – on Spring’s Fair Bud –
And Cows who slowly – chew their cud –
On Birds that wheel – and Fish that swim –
On you and me – on her – and him –

The Seas will shift – the Mountain range –
Will rise and fall – for All will change –
The Rose will die – her blush will shade –
Our Memories – these too, shall fade –

But Time’s bright Eyes – shine through the Night –
When our Souls – have taken flight –
Unchanged, they reign – up in the Sky –
(The Stars are not – like You and I)

Poems # 1776 & 1777

                        (in the style of Emily Dickinson)

"DISILLUSIONMENT AT TWO O'CLOCK"

             (a poem in the style of Wallace Stevens)

The poems are haunted
by thin, tasteless gruel.
It is not pretty or filling,
with metaphorical joy
or tasty, with rhyme galore
or healthy, with meaning understood.
None of them are ambiguous,
with hints of skeletons
flickering beneath their ghost faces.
People are going to dream
of underpinnings and things ethereal.
Only, here and there, an old poet,
silly and asleep at his typewriter,
catches phrases in the alphabet soup.

"13 Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens"

(another poem in the style of Wallace Stevens)

 I
Among many deceased poets
The one with a truly quirky
Eye might have been an insurance salesman.

   II
I was of three minds about
The fellow with the blue guitar
But I dug the Miltonic 33’s of it.

   III
The poet whirled into analogy.
It was only a fragment of his whimsy.

   IV
A poet and his vision are one.
A poet and his vision and his style are one.

   V
I do not know which to mimic,
The cleverness of allegory,
Or the cleverness of syntax.
The poet scribbling
Or just before.

   VI
Transformation informed the subtle prose
With pointed barbs.
The shadow of the poet
Crossed it, back and forth.
The meaning
Scribed in the phrases
An unfathomable reference.

   VII
O actuary of Hartford,
Why do you envision olden words?
Do you not see how the litotes
Dance around the bodies of the
Hacks around you?

   VIII
I know forthright speech
And clear, dialectical simplicity;
But I’ve read, too,
That the poet is involved
In what I know.

   IX
When the wordsmith began coining new terms,
It lay the groundwork
For many a palace.

   X
Upon seeing the poet
Soaring to new metaphors,
Even my well-honed lines
Would chuckle in delight.

   XI
He wrote in Connecticut
In a meditative irony.
Once, a paradox seized him,
In that he confused
The bravado of his language
For landscapes.

   XII
The poet is skeptical.
The disillusionment must be a heaving ocean.

   XIII
It was painting all dreams.
It was alluding.
And it was going to contemplate.
The poets caveat
In the Cedar Tavern….

* * *

On the porch
in the afternoon sun
an enormous
crab

is carefully folded
into a small box
on which someone
has stenciled the word,
“sonnet.”

The crab is
still
breathing

and in the
slanted light
his elegant legs
bend
to and fro.
 

"SO MUCH DEPENDS ON THAT PEDIATRICIAN FROM PATERSON"

                         (in the style of William Carlos Williams)

"I KNEW A POET LOVELY IN HIS TONES"

                         (in the style of Theodore Roethke)

I knew a poet, lovely in his tones
When small words cried, he would cry back at them,
Ah, when he wrote, the critics took to phones:
The japes a witty paper might contain!
Of his plum phrases only truths should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d let them sing his praises, chic to chic.)

How well his language went! He stoked each thin
Unyielding note and made it burn, and stand
And very much gave them their bones and skin;
We read devotedly his published land.
His words would tickle; I, poor I, would take
Learning from him, and style, for pity’s sake
(But such stupendous growing we can’t fake.)

Poems love a reader and abhor a noose;
His ideas first the wayward image pleased;
He scribbled quick, he splayed them without ruse;
My eyes, they glazed wherever his words teased;
His many verses kept us on our toes,
Or one line trembled like a dew-kissed rose
(He wrote in circles, yet each arc still glows.)

Let deeds be brass, let brass all fade away;
We’re smarter for these writings, all his own;
Why, read ‘em, and forget verbosity!
He fills his books with words as tight as stone.
But who would feel he’s gritty in his ways?
This old bard loves to learn his haunting phrase;
(I measure rhyme by how a buddy blaze.)