Pastiche
Dave McClure’s poem The Traveler is a comical imitation written after Edgar Alan Poe’s poem The Raven. Look at McClure’s opening stanza:
“Long ago upon a hilltop (let me finish then I will stop)
I espied a curious traveler where no traveler was before.
As I raised an arm in greeting all at once he took to beating
at the air like one entreating passing boats to come ashore
like a castaway repeating empty movements from the shore
or an over-eager whore.”
It keenly imitates the arrangement of words used by Poe in the original poem. Likewise, it echoes the same rhyming scheme as well. Read the opening lines from Poe’s The Raven for a better comparison:
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.”
The only remarkable difference between the two poems that we can recognize is the serious tone of the original poem contrasts the humorous tone of the imitation
“Long ago upon a hilltop (let me finish then I will stop)
I espied a curious traveler where no traveler was before.
As I raised an arm in greeting all at once he took to beating
at the air like one entreating passing boats to come ashore
like a castaway repeating empty movements from the shore
or an over-eager whore.”
It keenly imitates the arrangement of words used by Poe in the original poem. Likewise, it echoes the same rhyming scheme as well. Read the opening lines from Poe’s The Raven for a better comparison:
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.”
The only remarkable difference between the two poems that we can recognize is the serious tone of the original poem contrasts the humorous tone of the imitation