I've been a bit under the weather this week and I realize how much I can't stand being sick. First, it feels like everything is contaminated. I will only wear something once when I'm sick then I feel it needs a long soaking in hot water with lots and lots of bubbles. Also, I feel as if being sick wastes days. I look at this week and how I'm behind in everything I've wanted to do and feel I've lost time. Though I did watch Annie Hall, a movie I've always been *meaning* to watch, other than that, I slept, I watched daytime TV (which is terrible) and I wandered around in a haze.
Still, while I was sick I did manage to do some needed reading for school. The book How to Write Funny, which has a number of essays by writers and poets including Denise Duhamel, Sherman Alexie, Dave Barry, Robin Hemley, Melissa Banks, and others.
One of the main ways writers thought they create humor in their work is through exaggeration.
Or at least, this is what they think, but what I saw was the funniest writers were able to take what happened in their daily lives and tweak it either to give it an absurdity, or a "can you believe we do this?" feeling. It's sort of the Jerry Seinfeld way of noticing the strangeness in our lives that we overlook ( I always go in the airplane's bathroom, even if I don't have to go. It's nice. It's like your own little apartment on the plane, isn't it? You go in there, lock the door, the light comes on after second. It's like a little surprise party--or know I will never be able to understand how a woman can take boiling hot wax pour it on her upper thigh and rip the hair out by the root and still be afraid of a spider. I'm not spending anymore time working on that. )
I've got a pretty dry sense of humor and find that I appreciate wit and intellect, more than exaggeration and slapstick. I've seen a few male poets think they can make people laugh by the perfectly placed fart joke. There is an eight-year-old boy mentality, which many must keep otherwise there would be a whole series of movies that wouldn't be produced and South Park wouldn't be kept on the air--there is a talking turd in that show, to someone, that is golden comedy.
So, I guess these are some of the things I'm beginning to explore in my paper. First, what makes something funny? Second: What does a poet risk by using humor? Third: what actual techniques can be used to create humor or is humor so organic, it cannot be planned?
I also want to look at poems that are parodies of other poems. I've always been a fan of good parodies. Even Weird Al and his songs, some of his lyrics are pretty smart (recently, I just saw the video for White and Nerdy and I thought it was pretty funny). And the "My Cubicle" song, which is a parody on James Blunt "You're Beautiful."
Though back to poetry, here are two of my favorites:
We Old Dudes
We old dudes. We
White shoes. We
Golf ball. We
Eat mall. We
Soak teeth. We
Palm Beach. We
Vote Red. We
Soon Dead.
by Joan Murray
******************
and
Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
by Kenneth Koch
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on
for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
