I appreciate your poem. I don’t know how to radically accept what’s coming up for me in the moment. One day, I’m strongly convicted about one path and the next I’m just as convicted about another path. What do I do with that? It is what it is, and then it isn’t. I have to book flights. I have to make decisions. I have to find some thread that leads me forward into some new reality. I feel tossed about by the waves. I appreciate this poem.
Thank you. I hate feeling tossed about by the waves almost as much as I hate the phrase “it is what it is.” But it really is what it is, and sometimes acknowledging that is all we have to hold on to.
"I’m certainly old enough that I should have long ago made peace with the narrow and culturally fragile circumstances under which one’s cosmic citizenship is appreciable." Great sentence.
FWIW, I believe there is always the same amount of humor in poetry. At any given time, like 5-7% of poetry is funny or comical or humor-forward in some way, and this ratio fluctuates a little but never fundamentally changes, even going back to the ancients. You just have to know where to look! But because the ratio is small relative to the whole body of poetry being written, it seems like the species is endangered, but it never is. I also would prefer too few “humorous” poems than too many. Supposedly humorous poems that aren’t actually humorous or aren’t actually good poetry do catastrophic harm to the reputation of all actually good humorous poems, so let’s celebrate the fact that humor in poetry feels endangered!
It could. But I think that quote implies, maybe unintentionally, that the people who are funny are an entirely separate class, and I think it’s more fluid than that. For example, I’d say that while most people are not funny, all people are potentially funny, and many unfunny people become the most funny, and many funny people become extremely unfunny, so who is funny is always changing, not set in stone. And while 5-7% of poets are funny, 100% of poets could be funny if they wanted to bad enough, and maybe most obviously of all, many funny poets are way less funny in real life than in their poems (I would put myself in this category), and many super unfunny poets are very funny in real life.
perhaps / you do make several tributary points to explore / but "potential humorists" I don' know / Billy Coliins said "you can't teach funny." / that's his experience as a university professor.
Hey Thomas, I wrote a longer response / rebuttal to this comment but it got so long, I'm considering saving it for a new post. If I took our exchange about humor in poetry and presented it as a dialogue in one of my weekly posts, would you want to be named or anonymous? I would probably edit both your and my responses. For example, I would probably remove the line breaks and slashes from yours and revise mine generally to make myself sound smarter.... Just wanted to ask you if you wanted to be tagged as the interlocutor or not. (And thank you for inspiring me to write so many thoughts about this subject.)
I appreciate your poem. I don’t know how to radically accept what’s coming up for me in the moment. One day, I’m strongly convicted about one path and the next I’m just as convicted about another path. What do I do with that? It is what it is, and then it isn’t. I have to book flights. I have to make decisions. I have to find some thread that leads me forward into some new reality. I feel tossed about by the waves. I appreciate this poem.
Thank you. I hate feeling tossed about by the waves almost as much as I hate the phrase “it is what it is.” But it really is what it is, and sometimes acknowledging that is all we have to hold on to.
"I’m certainly old enough that I should have long ago made peace with the narrow and culturally fragile circumstances under which one’s cosmic citizenship is appreciable." Great sentence.
Thank you, Jeffrey.
love "Business Plan" /
humor in poetry is on
the endangered species
list.
Thank you Thomas!
FWIW, I believe there is always the same amount of humor in poetry. At any given time, like 5-7% of poetry is funny or comical or humor-forward in some way, and this ratio fluctuates a little but never fundamentally changes, even going back to the ancients. You just have to know where to look! But because the ratio is small relative to the whole body of poetry being written, it seems like the species is endangered, but it never is. I also would prefer too few “humorous” poems than too many. Supposedly humorous poems that aren’t actually humorous or aren’t actually good poetry do catastrophic harm to the reputation of all actually good humorous poems, so let’s celebrate the fact that humor in poetry feels endangered!
James Tate said in an interview with The Paris Review that "most people are not funny." Maybe this correlates with your 5-7% ratio?
It could. But I think that quote implies, maybe unintentionally, that the people who are funny are an entirely separate class, and I think it’s more fluid than that. For example, I’d say that while most people are not funny, all people are potentially funny, and many unfunny people become the most funny, and many funny people become extremely unfunny, so who is funny is always changing, not set in stone. And while 5-7% of poets are funny, 100% of poets could be funny if they wanted to bad enough, and maybe most obviously of all, many funny poets are way less funny in real life than in their poems (I would put myself in this category), and many super unfunny poets are very funny in real life.
perhaps / you do make several tributary points to explore / but "potential humorists" I don' know / Billy Coliins said "you can't teach funny." / that's his experience as a university professor.
Hey Thomas, I wrote a longer response / rebuttal to this comment but it got so long, I'm considering saving it for a new post. If I took our exchange about humor in poetry and presented it as a dialogue in one of my weekly posts, would you want to be named or anonymous? I would probably edit both your and my responses. For example, I would probably remove the line breaks and slashes from yours and revise mine generally to make myself sound smarter.... Just wanted to ask you if you wanted to be tagged as the interlocutor or not. (And thank you for inspiring me to write so many thoughts about this subject.)
sure / go ahead / unmask me 😃