A "Coole" Parody

The two poems that Andrew Hudgins refers to in his parody, "The Wild Swans Skip School", are "We Real Cool", by Gwendolyn Brooks, and "The Wild Swans at Coole", by William Yeats. The parody itself is short, merely six lines, yet is able to masterfully integrate both poems' rather contrasting structures, tones and themes.
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Brooks's "We Real Cool" is famous for its powerful, yet short and simple couplets. Brooks, essentially commenting on the rash and dangerous lifestyle of the young pool players, does not have many words to spare. The poem is quick and concise and its message is clear: If one lives primarily for the moment, signified by the short couplets each describing a different event, then he or she will not have many moments to cherish. The poem starts with, "We real cool", speaking to the invincible attitude of younger generations, and ends with a non-euphemistic "We Die soon."
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In sharp contrast to the pessimistic tone and jutting sentences of "We Real Cool", is William Yeats's "The Wild Swans at Coole". Yeats writes in long, flowery sentences, with a tone of reverence for nature's beauty and wonders. He remarks on "The trees ... in their autumn beauty," and "the October twilight" mirrored on the water. The subject of his poem, the nine-and-fifty swans, provides a bliss for him as he observes their every move. The tone shifts towards the middle of the poem as the swans fly away, and a sense of longing and sadness ensues. Yeats ends the poem with, "By what lake's edge or pool / Delight men's eyes when I awake some day / To find they have flown away?" Yeats, through his expressive description of his surroundings and his tone shift in response to the swans' desertion, is attempting to convey the importance of living life to its fullest and enjoying the small and simple pleasures of life. This contrasts Brooks's idea of living with respect to the future, rather than getting absorbed in the present.
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It is because of these striking differences in structure and content that Hudgins's poem succeeds in being parodical. Hudgins, being well aware of the contrasting themes, integrates the graceful swans of Yeat's poem into the background and setting of Brooks's. Essentially he takes Yeats's swans out of context and sets them into the theme surrounding the pool players. By doing this, he cuts out all of the flowery language that makes the swans graceful, and mockingly depicts them as school children that "skip school". The swans, rather than being a temporary escape from the realities of the world, are now fully emersed in it. Also, since Yeats poem takes the form of Brooks, the point of view shifts as well. Rather than the swans being wondrously observed, they are the ones speaking. These shifts give the swans a new personality: reckless, hasty, and short-lived. This is in direct contrast to the swans in Yeats's poem, who, "paddle in the cold... lover by lover...passion or conquest, wander where they will." The fact that Hudgins turns Yeats's careful and eloquent language into hasty and swift sentences, is a direct mockery of Yeats's theme. By undermining Yeats's elegance, Hudgins attempts to reveal his naivety towards escaping reality for simple pleasures. He portrays Yeats as a youthful Romantic who obsesses over the trivialities of life rather than focusing on the future. "The nineteenth autumn has come upon me / Since I first made my count;" Yeats writes. Yeats admits that for nineteen years he has been chasing after the birds on the lake.
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At the end of his poem, Hudgins writes, "We / won't stay. We / fly 'way." Through this statement, Hudgins reveals how short lived the pleasures of the swans are to Yeats. He parallels the last line of his poem with the last line of "We Real Cool", "We / Die Soon" to signify that his naive escape will end abruptly as reality sets in. Hudgins through his use of parody and the juxtaposition of two extremely different poems, is able to reveal his thoughts about Yeats's poem, mocking/ "scorning" him for his idealistic outlook on life.