Laughing with or at?: The simple joy of parody poems

It's been a while since I've covered a new poetic form, so what better form to cover than a humorous one: the parody poem.

A parody poem is one that pokes fun at another poem or poet. For instance, I recently read a parody of "We Real Cool," by Gwendolyn Brooks, in an online version of Coe Review called "We Real White" that cracked me up. I even showed former Poetic Asides co-blogger Nancy Breen, but now it's apparently disappeared in the ethernet.

Soooo... I'm going to provide my own example that is not nearly as funny as the "We Real Cool"-"We Real White" parody. Instead, I'm going to parody one of my all-time favorite poems by Walt Whitman--"Song of Myself."

Here goes:

"My Song"

I congratulate myself and talk to myself;
I make a bunch of assumptions and descriptions;
what I talk about you listen to me talk about;
I talk about myself a lot;
but that's okay;
and boring.

The original version was much longer,
but nobody read it,
because it was longer,
because it had too many long descriptions,
because I have an affinity for exclammation points!!!!!!!!!!!!

So let's cut to the chase,
and get this over with,
and celebrate me,
and celebrate you,
and whoopity-doo!

So here's the short version,
and you better read it.