Response Poetry

Response poetry is not a new phenomenon. One of the earliest examples is Raleigh's response to Marlowe in the Nymph - Shepherd poems. The playful or veangeful response to another's poetry has been a century's old game.

W. Todd Kaneko (2008) in a paper about response poetry noted some points about writing a response to someones else's poems. For the body around these points click the response poetry link above.

1. Write a reply to the poem.

2. Imitate the form of the poem.

3. Build off a primary metaphor that the poem works from.

4. Steal the first line of the poem.

5. Use a passage as an epigraph.

6. Turn Prose into Verse.

7. Write the opposite of the poem.

I encourage you to read Kaneko's paper to get a fuller explanation along with examples.


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