“With parody, you’re referencing and sending up a particular genre, and mostly your material is going to be taken out of that genre.” —Marlon Wayans

Tapping lazily, but doggedly, the lovelorn poet composes a song in praise of his dream amour. To deliver it, though, he is demure: cowered by a muzzle like a dog’s, voice like a frog’s, moves like a bump on a log. Oh, for a way to extend his compliments to the one he adores, without rudely awakening her scorn!

I’d like to say that parody is a celebration of a person’s specific characteristics, as opposed to mockery

—Ana Gasteyer

Barking lazily, doggedly, the poet hunts-and-pecks for a way to convey his adoration of the worshiped one’s charms, in the key of a songbird on the tree of poetry, when he spots, as at a funny farm, a quick brown fox, marking poetry’s tree, with a pee.

Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out

—Dawn Powell

Dancing hands, marionettes, trembling on catgut strands stretched along the fretted neck of a surrogate’s guitar, while the romantic poet howls from afar, and the quick brown fox growls in the key of poetry, to a songbird that flaps like castanets.

There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.

—P. J. O’Rourke

The stand-in balladeer renders the song on bended knee, as the demure poet with a muzzle like a dog’s, barks up the tree of poetry, the love in his heart reaching a songbird’s key. Thus, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and comes to the aid of the party.

It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form

—Georges Bataille