The Greatest Parodies Of All Time

The greatest parodies of all time where created by the writers of Monty Python. To judge the weight of my argument I beg the reader’s indulgence to give three minutes of your time to view the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp4mENrAnq4
After which you will be well versed in the poetry of Ewan McTeagle, the Scottish Poet. The Python poetry quoted here is from the following link:http://www.heretical.com/miscella/mppoetry.html

Few scholars have argued that McTeagle’s poems are parodies of the the filthy, dirty poems of Robert Burns, McTeagle would not have stooped so low as to parody Burns’ disgusting “Ode to Haggis.” Yes, McTeagle was a Scot, but his poetry is a parody of Poetry itself! A parody not just of Poetry, but a parody of all of Civilization and of the act of creating any form of art.

As we read the poem, “Lend us a quid till the end of the week” we realize that it is the whole system of monetary exchange that is being made fun of. Usury, printing, the mores of human community are treated with distain and waggishness.

Lend us a quid till the end of the week.
If you could see your way
To lending me sixpence
I could at least buy a newspaper.
That's not much to ask anyone.

In McTeagle’s work we see a simplicity that defies all efforts to parse. We are confronted with a persona that has returned to mankind’s most basic needs. His parody of all love poetry, “To Ma Own Beloved Mary” cannot in anyway be compared to the sonnets of Shakespeare or Shelly. It casts aside all pretense. It shatters all illusions of the civilized lover. There is no rhyme, no subtext, no metaphor, no hidden music to enchant the reader. All that remains is brute, primal need.

To Ma’ Own Beloved Mary.
A poem on her 17th birthday'

Lend us a couple of bob till Thursday
I'm absolutely skint
But I'm expecting a postal order
And I can pay you back
As soon as it comes.

After reading McTeagle’s, one wonders if one can ever return to Homer, to Shakespeare or Dr. Zeus? Has McTeagle’s brutal parody of all art, all language, spoiled the very thought of Poetry forever?

Can parody enlighten or enliven the original? NO! No, indeed, I frankly caution any reader of this essay never to venture into McTeague’s longest and most complex work,’'What's twenty quid to the bloody Midland Bank?'

Henry Reed’s “Chard Whitlow” provides new insight’s into Eliot’s gloomy Four Quartets, lightens Eliot’s darkness, and provides the reader a new prospective to Eliot’s work.  Stevie Smith’s “Thoughts about the Person from Porlock” is a fine poem that stands by itself as part of a larger conversation about the act of thinking and writing. Ewan McTeagle is the dark force, the great destroyer, he and the Pythons would take us back to the pre-stone age, begging in grunts to each other to borrow a bone to whack our neighbor’s chickens with. A bone that would likely never be repaid on Thursday!