The Curse of Humour

Yesterday I picked up the latest Selected Poems by Roger McGough, one of my favorite poets from years ago. Reading through his poems just reminds me of how much I’ve borrowed from him in my own writing, at least in terms of over-the-top bravado:

Or when I’m 104
&banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
& fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
& throw away every piece but one

(from “Let me Die a Young Man’s Death”)

There’s a poignancy at the end of many of his poems that makes you realize the stakes have been higher than the light tone led you to believe. I like that – the poem that catches the reader up short so they realize even the apparently trivial has depth.

I like other poets who are similar to McGough in some ways. I think of poets like e.e. cummings (so many good lines, but I always think of the opening, “(ponder, darling, these busted statues”) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for example. cummings, not Frost, Lowell, Pound, Williams or Stevens, would be my choice for best modernist poet and Ferlinghetti would out-Beat Ginsberg in my book any day. But critics have tended to treat these poets in the past as ‘minor.’ Even Robert Browning, who I count as a strong influence on my work, has been considered a durable but minor poet.

But, then, we live in postmodern times or postpostmodern times where the hierarchies of the literary patriarchy have been toppled and we no longer think in terms of ‘best’ or ‘great’ or ‘minor.’ Those days are done. We have learned to see writers as conduits for multiple ideologies and variant readings and we have simultaneously unmasked the power politics that lay behind literary coronations of mostly white males.

Even so, I find the writers I most admire don’t get much attention from the literary establishment. It can’t be because they’re no good because ‘no good’ doesn’t exist anymore. It could be that they’re just not interesting or relevant to critics these days. But I think the truth is much simpler. These poets are often funny.

It’s the last literary bulwark – the one between serious meaningful literature and humorous writing. It’s a barrier that goes all the way back to classical times and has been maintained and dusted by its Christian overseers for centuries (just ask Chaucer). And it survives, oddly enough, in post-Christian postmodern criticism and its almost humorless humour, despite the widespread evidence that postmodern writers themselves are often self-referentially funny – though it’s a sense of humour that most readers have no access to.

Even in pop cultural circles it’s the dramas that tend to win the Academy Awards for Best Picture while quality comedies are often noted but not rewarded (except by the Golden Globes – a comedy act all on its own). Even most viewers think of comedy as something they can turn their minds off for and just relax (they’re wrong, of course, but that’s an argument for another time).

With my own work, I notice that in poetry events I’ve been involved with, for the first long while I was often slated as the opener because I had become known as a humorous poet. I was someone who could get the crowd going. Over the years, my position in the order has moved toward the end of these evenings, possibly because hosts have noticed a darker side to some of my work and a.) they wanted to avoid disturbing listeners too early on or b.) I was being recognized as a more serious poet. On the other hand, it could just be a coincidence.

If you want proof of the hegemony of the serious, just grab any poetry anthology and browse. Let me know how many funny poems you find. Or even how many poems you find with a funny line. There are of course exceptions, such as the book Stand Up Poetry, edited by Charles Harper Webb. This is an anthology designed to highlight poets that are currently using humour effectively in American poetry, featuring poets as diverse as: Billy Collins, Lucille Clifton, Charles Bukowski, Jeffrey McDaniel, Russell Edson and Stephen Dobyns.. Read poets like these and you’ll feel like someone opened a window or sprayed you with a hose on an oppressive summer’s day. And I’m willing to bet that somewhere in mid-laughter you will have an epiphany about life – even if it’s only about what you’ve been missing in terms of poetry.