Duhamel on Humor in Poetry

24 June 2008

“The more sacred the slain cow, the tastier the feast.”

-Denise Duhamel

Denise Duhamel gave a laugh-out-loud funny talk on an oft-undervalued aspect of poetry: humor. She showed how classic stand-up tricks, like following the main punch-line with “tags,” mangled cliches and malapropisms, and, above all, a tone in satire that admits complicity–a kind of poking fun at the speaking self alongside all humanity–can serve to open up a funny poem to more than just laughs. How fitting that she deliver this talk on the heels of the news of George Carlin’s death, in the ha-ha-ouch age of Stephen Colbert. She spoke to the subversive nature of humor as a means to talk back to power through the side of one’s mouth, to work on levels too fast and facile to register in the minds of self-righteous oppressors–a kind of political Capoeira, an expansive, complicated, lethal dance with the truth.

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Posted in MFA, Poetry | Tagged , , , , | Comments (6)

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  • http://www.poetryhut.com/wordpress Jilly

    I bet that was a good lecture!

  • Robert

    De-lish.

  • Kurt

    “The ha-ha-ouch age.” Did you coin that phrase? Very appropriate.

  • Robert

    I’m so hyped up on ideas from such a goulash of sources I hesitate to say, just because I can’t remember the source, “yes, it was me.” But I agree with you agreeing with me agreeing with whoever said it first (which might be me): apropos.

  • http://lovesettlement.blogspot.com Glenn Ingersoll

    “She showed how classic stand-up tricks, like following the main punch-line with “tags,” mangled cliches and malapropisms, and, above all, a tone in satire that admits complicity — a kind of poking fun at the speaking self alongside all humanity”

    I like this idea, learning “the rules” comedians follow and seeing what of them one could bring to a poem.

  • Robert

    At some point in my writing career I realized that what makes poetry interesting is not necessarily that different than what makes humor funny — i.e. a twist of expectation. For example, setting up a pattern and then disrupting it is a classic ploy in jokes where e.g. something happens twice, then, just when you think it will happen again, something else happens in the third instance. But Duhamel really articulated this well in drawing parallels to stand-up techniques like the “tag.”