[New-Poetry] Mad Libs

[JforJames at aol.com]

I've not read this one...but 'the process' seem similar:
 
In W.D. Snodgrass's De/Compositions (Graywolf, $16 paperback), the Pulitzer 
Prize-winning poet rewrites 101  poems – some classics, all by well-known 
authors – but writes them badly. In a  few instances, the revisions are from the 
original authors. The results are  slyly instructive and often funny. Mr. 
Snodgrass's de/compositions are an  artform of a very low sort, but one that only a 
skilled practitioner could  achieve. They retain the form of the original; 
still, each artless paraphrase  lands on the page with a dull, leaden thud.  
The author organizes his efforts into five  sections according to the 
essential trait that he has squeezed out of the  original: "Abstract & General vs. 
Concrete & Specific," "Undercurrents,"  "The Singular Voice," "Metrics & Music" 
and "Structure & Climax." These  titles help, particularly with the 
de/compositions that you can tell are  inferior to the original, but for which you 
cannot put your finger on exactly  what is missing. If, even with these headings, 
the lesson is not within reach,  Mr. Snodgrass has appended a brief commentary 
at the end of each section that  helps identify the missing element from each 
de/composition.  
De/Compositions is a fabulous book for  poetry circles, book clubs, and 
anyone in search of what makes poetry special or  trying to improve one's own. 
Mining the lessons in this book is something like  the work of an accident 
reconstruction expert, as we learn our lessons from the  details of failure, but with 
a sublime difference: There's a laugh on nearly  every page.  
As Mr. Snodgrass acknowledges in his preface,  De/Compositions illustrates 
W.H. Auden's comment that there are few  things funnier than bad poems.   
>From Tom Mayo, review 2002 
http://faculty.smu.edu/tmayo/poetry07apr02.htm
In a message dated 10/3/2006 5:32:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
wwmorgan at ilstu.edu writes:

Here's  an exercise I use in class, familiar I'm sure to many of you as
>Mad  Libs. If you'd like to tilt this whirl, or at the windmill, that
>would  be nifty; I'll post the original in a day or two.
>
>Exercised, as  ever, and interested in what poems do  --
>AMP
>
>
>________     _________
>
>
>
>December. An arctic wind,  new
>And ________ . ________ and polar bears
>Sink into their  winter ________.
>Just then,
>________ , in the folds of ________  snow,
>The ________ of spring get set.
>
>June. In a  ________ ceremony
>Filled with ________,
>The man is ________ at  ________.
>Just then
>It is midnight in the ________ ________. The  ________
>Reports for duty: he recognizes the  ________.
>
>December. Suddenly the ________
>turns over , I  ________ in a squalid
>________, and watch, as expected,
>Just  then
>All my stolen ________  drift by
>Like ________   ________ .


 
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