Volume 22, Issue 3

More than 2000 years after Aristotle declared tragedy superior to comedy, humor in poetry still gets, if not exactly no respect, not very much. Mainstream verse has partially absorbed the influence of stand up poetry; but it does so apologetically: “So-and-So is funny sometimes, true. But he can really write.” Yet comedy may be better-suited than tragedy to capture the absurdities, enormities, and pathos of 21st century life. Humor also deals effectively with the philosophical and political concerns addressed by the often obscure and difficult avant-garde; and it does so without sacrificing readability. Mark Halliday's poems are a case in point, their humor and entertainment value inseparable from a seriousness which sheds considerable light on the problems of being human in the post-modern world.

Stevie Smith was a deeply original and serious poet who masqueraded as a poet of eccentric light verse, as if tempting her less perceptive readers to expose their own conventionality by dismissing her as an entertainer. Her poetic voice often imitates the voice of an impatient bright child, or the voice of an impetuous or irritable person amateurishly imitating classic poetry; but these imitations turn out to be strategies employed by Stevie Smith to achieve startling effects as what seems at first to be naïve then comes to seem strangely ironic and penetrating. As in all great comic writers, Smith's humor can be felt as an unsettling possibility always vibrating in her voice. Some of her most comic poems arise from her drastic skepticism about romantic love and marriage. She finds many ways to expose and satirize the arrogance of men, while also pointing out ways in which women cooperate with that arrogance. She implies that romantic passion is an illusion from which people need to escape so as to find another, less melodramatic center of value.

Denise Duhamel and Michael Burkard continue the work of postconfessional poets like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton using humor to explore culturally taboo topics and expand the traditional range of poetic subjects. The works of Duhamel and Burkard often explore subjects that are secret, shameful or unspoken made approachable through tender and satirical humor to turn these issues into something beautiful. Duhamel uses humor to critique American culture and the domestic arena with the clarity of an outsider while Burkard uses humor to write about loss and recovery, discovering the fantastic in the familiar. Through humor in first-person confessional poems these poets create a more open environment where the poet and their audiences may confront the truth of themselves and the world in which they live.

As humorists, women poets have a spotty history. Sure, there is comedy in the work of Gertrude Stein and in the darkly sarcastic poems of Dorothy Parker, but humor is hardly as prevalent as it is in the works of male poets, who have a rich history of comic poetry dating back to Chaucer and leading up to Philip Larkin, John Ashbery, Billy Collins, and others. Rather than make comparisons, however, I explore women poets on their own terms, paying particular attention to the way contemporary women poets in America use humor in their work. I outline four modes (thematic, tonal, imagistic, and syntactical), then examine why women use humor—to what ends? Ultimately, I argue that humor is disruption, a way to assert authority, and often a means by which women poets examine sexual and social mores.

The mention of farts in English language poetry has changed just as the role of poetry in our lives. This essay offers a survey of the uses and mentions of the word fart and the act of farting in poetry, centering around poet and critic Matthew Arnold's notion of “high seriousness” as the ideal place for poetry, as well as poet Robert Lowell's idea of the “raw and cooked” in 20th century American poetry. Questions posed: Can poetry and the mention of farts coexist? Can both anti-academic and academic poets' farts find their way to the page in a post-post-“high seriousness” age?

The article argues that humor and poetry are “arts of sudden knowledge,” along with art, meditation, and psychology. In arts of sudden knowledge one paradigm suddenly gives way to another. They are based on the embarrassment of narrative inventions. Sonnets are particularly associated with turns, usually in the final couplet. Jokes too have a pivot, at the punchline. We live in a moral world that exists within a world in which animals eat each other to live. The parrot is in so many jokes because it highlights the line between who talks and who gets eaten. Two parrot jokes are told in the essay, one in prose, one in poetry. Poetry and humor, like the other arts of sudden knowledge, affect people physically, and we judge poetry and humor by feel. In a discussion of taking an idea from humor to philosophy, the example of today's gym culture is discussed. Kant and Schopenhauer are both cited describing humor as a sudden realization of a mistranslation. A poem by Sarah Manguso is included, from her book Siste Viator , as is a poem by Hecht from her book Funny .

Why are new lyrics to old songs so often a source of inspiration and fun? This article explores how poems that rewrite popular song lyrics belong on the continuum between parody and burlesque. The parodist pays homage to the author of the source, but at the same time skewers the author by appropriating his distinctive style and using it to poke fun at him. The burlesque writer trades on the familiarity of the source material and uses it for commentary. New words for old songs give pleasure because they engage more of the senses than simply reading them. The reader “hears” the poem while reading it. The humor in the poem is enhanced for those who know the original melodies, keeping the song alive through the humor the parodist evokes.

In contemporary poetry rage and anger are no longer cool. Instead poets confront and critique society through cool, verbal wit and ironic whimsy. Yet anger often makes poets funny. How, then, can poetry, which relies so heavily upon nuance and ambiguity, achieve the volume, resonance, and inflection necessary to express a sense of defiance and rage? Poets like Kenneth Rexroth and Seidel demonstrate this technique in poems such as “Thou Shalt Not Kill” (Rexroth, The collected shorter poems, New Directions, 1966: 267–273) and “To Die For” (Seidel, Poems 1959–2009: Frederick Seidel, Pearson, 2009: 90) using rage and humor to overcome pessimism as their anger crescendos. Often times sardonic, incongruous, or terse the humor-rage of these poets is perhaps more fearless and clear-eyed than the cool wit of other contemporary, humorous poets. Whereas comedy provides detachment and perceptiveness, rage provides an occasion for forcefulness and outcry.

Over two decades ago, the Poetry Slam—a raucous poetry competition where random audience members serve as judges—was invented by a Chicago construction worker who felt driven to bring poetry back to the people. It worked, and the popularity of the poetry slam and its poets has created a passionate new generation of writers and audience members, particularly among those demographics traditionally underrepresented in poetry (youth poets, queer poets, poets of color, among others). But how has all this attention and pressure a¤ected the poetry created within the Poetry Slam? By breaking down the Poetry Slam movement into three defined waves, Aptowicz explores how the use of humor as a strategy within the Poetry Slam has evolved over these years. By focusing on specific humorous poets who have succeeded within the Poetry Slam, she shows how these poets have had an ever-changing idea of what it meant to be a slam poet, both in terms of the type of poetry and performance expected of them, as well as the type of rewards they themselves expected if they did prove successful within the Poetry Slam.