When I read this Hot Air article on the white dude who got his poem published by submitting it using an Asian pseudonym, well, first I laughed. And then I laughed a little more. But eventually I was done chuckling, and then I decided that I should share with the world the method that I developed in college to write modern poetry for my English classes. Worked like a charm – and I always did very well in my English classes, I’ll have you know*.
Moe Lane’s Foolproof Method for Writing Modern Poetry
- Open up your word processor.
- Decide how long your poem needs to be.
- Type out about two paragraphs worth of stuff. It doesn’t really matter what, as long as it’s vaguely coherent. Banal is good. Perfect, even.
- Go to the first word. Control-Right Arrow your way through the text; at semi-random intervals stop, and hit the Enter key. The length of the intervals depends on how long you want your poem to be; but don’t be consistent.
- When you have reached the end, look to see: is your poem the right length of lines? If so, hit save. If not, go back up to the text and create/remove lines as necessary.
- Pick a title. Pick something vague, pretentious, and at least vaguely related to the text.