It took me a while to shift my copy of BRAND-X POETRY: A Parody Anthology,
edited by William Zaranka, Picador, 1984, 418 pages, to the computer, but
here at last is his MacLeish.

(The same book was published in the US by Apple-wood Books, 1981, as THE
BURNT NORTON ANTHOLOGY, the cover of which shows a colour picture in the
style of William Blake called 'The Full Professors' - they appear to be
stoning some bard to death.)

Ar(chibald')s Poetica

A poem may boast bravado
Like a muted avocado

Shriek
Like old razor blades to the cheek

Resound like the moss-grown casements
Of flooded basements

But a poem to be laudable
Must be inaudible

        * * *

A poem should be hushed
As a bowl of mush

Leaving as the mush is swallowed
Mouthful by mouthful the spoon-entangled hollow

Leaving as the mush goes down
Memories of the lack of sound

A poem should be hushed
As a bowl of mush

        * * *

A poem like a proper child
Should not be wild

Should clean its face
Should not mean all over the place

Should  not be particularly present, should avoid
The regions of Cupid

Should be
A little bit stupid

            --Alan Ribback

The acknowledgements spell this Riback, and give Furioso, 1951, as source.

'William Zaranka, editor of BRAND-X POETRY and its companion BRAND-X FICTION
(also in Picador) is also the director of the writing programme at the
University of Denver. He is an amateur astrologer and lives with his wife
Ruth and son Jake in Colorado.'

The anthology begins with 'Winter is icummen in' (Pound) and proceeds
chronologically to Strand, Benedikt, Wakowski, Simic, Tate, AI, and Russell
Edson. An essay on 'Prosodomy' follows ('Verse may be distinguished from
prose not only by its spelling, but also by its high compression and rhythm
method.' etc.)

Zaranka's own parodies are of Frost ('Left-Leaning TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
Sign', Chaucer, Plath -

Ragout

What a trick -
Your prick instead of a carrot.
O pinch of pepper lover,
My soprano man,

Once a week I try it, I do,
Whetting the carving knives,
Making a stew,
A stew of the privates of you.

etc

Creeley, Berryman, Wilbur, Hecht

Zaranka's 'Foreplay' criticises the Ed Norton Anthology ('While it boasts
single colons (poetry in double colons reads unnaturally) and comfortable
margarines, it errs in its predictably biased selection'.... 'More
specialized contemporary anthologies, such as Stephen Bug's and Robert
Measly's Naked Lunch Poetry, or A. Poupon's Temporary Poetry, or even
Haystack Carruth's The Vice That Is Great Within Us, are similarly
flawed...' 'an alternative to the traditional literary corpse as defined in
Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Tyrant...')

Beginning readers should consult Zaranka's introductory essays to
1.The Middle-Aged, with its brief chronology from

ca.450: Hell's Anglo-Anne Sexton Conquest
to
1485:   End of "War of the Roadsters"

2.The Renaissance

1485: Hnery VII invents Tudor Ford
to
1649: Interragtime. Charles massacred by Piedmontese.

Z's summary of the 'discombobulation of sensibility' is recommended.

On pages 105-8 he summarizes Resurrection England and the Neo-Calcified Age
with its Heavy Traffic in Mockery.

The Nineteenth Century  runs from Lyrical Bellows to 1884: Tennyson accepts
porridge.
Page 144 instructs us in advent of Romanticism: 'what the German Romantics
called "Selbstbefleckung", translated by William Wordsworth to mean "the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."'
146: 'Walt Whitman, the "Brooklyn fairy," whose Leaves of Gas anticipates...
Whitman, whose invention of free verse (from the french, amour libre) he
likened to "dispensing food without a hairnet"...'

Z's twentieth century begins:

1912: Pound issues "Harriet Monroe Doctrine"

and fades away with

1980: Snack philanthropist James Muncher funds Iowa Cheese-Doodlers

His concluding paragraph groups contemporary poets as Hors d'oeuvres Poets,
Confection Poets, Before-Dinner-Drink Poets and After-Dinner Drink Poets
(Norman Drambuie and Coffee Awoonor).

All this seems in need of updating, PoetryEtc readers will agree.

Max Richards at Cooee, Melbourne

Coo-ee - Australia's Open Garden Scheme - 28-29 September - Relaxed
profusion of Australian and exotic plants....spectacular mosaic table
depicts 'the serpent in the garden'.