Laugh Lines

Abstract

Humor in recent American poetry has been largely ignored by scholars, due in part to reverence for the lyric. The book argues that humor is not a superficial feature of a small subset of American poetry, but an integral feature in a great deal of American poetry written since the 1950s. Instead of viewing poetry as a lofty genre, this book asks readers to consider poetry alongside another art form that has burgeoned in America since the 1950s: stand-up comedy. Both art forms use wit and laughter to rethink the world and the words that are used to describe it. Humor's disruptive nature makes it especially well-suited for critique, and many comedians and humorous poets are astute cultural critics. To that end, the book focuses on poetry that uses humor to espouse sociopolitical critique. To show the range of recent American poetry that uses humor to articulate sociopolitical critique, the book highlights the work of poets working in four distinct poetic genres: traditional, received forms, such as the sonnet; the epic; procedural poetry; and prose poetry. Marilyn Hacker, Harryette Mullen, Ed Dorn and Russell Edson, are the main focus of the chapters, but each chapter compares those poets to others writing humorous political poetry in the same genre, including Terrance Hayes and Anne Carson, to highlight the pervasiveness of this trend in recent American poetry and to reveal the particular ways the poets use conventions of poetic genre to generate or amplify their humor. The book shows that the interplay between humor and poetic genre creates special opportunities for political critique as poetic genres invoke the social constructs that the poets deride.