Jody Azzouni

Jody's Notes

Sometimes a poet exercises her muscles on other poems by other poets: writes in their style. Either as homage or as satire. (It's a traditional thing for poets to do; sort of like translating but with respect to sensibilities rather than languages.)

A poet did that with this poem. Wanda Coleman. She sent it to me, along with my poem (on a card) that she'd found in a book; and then some years later she included it in one of her books of poems--along with some other poems done in the style of (or inspired by) other poets.

She was fairly famous--for a poet, I mean. I'd heard of her anyway. She's died since then.

Over the years a couple of people have done that. Sent me one or another poem that either completed one of mine or was a variant. Some were engaged in something positive: the poem had inspired them. And some others (one other, anyway) were trying to be insulting. A whole range of responses. Maybe ten responses like that were mailed to me: poem-variants. In the last twenty years this has happened.

I reprinted this poem in The Lust for Blueprints.