Seriously Funny
Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else
Title Details
Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in
Formats
Paperback
Pub Date: 04/15/2010
ISBN: 9-780-8203-3569-8
List Price: $26.95
Hardcover
Pub Date: 04/15/2010
ISBN: 9-780-8203-3087-7
List Price: $74.95
Related Subjects
Seriously Funny
Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else
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- Description
- Reviews
- Contributors
Can serious poetry be funny? Chaucer and Shakespeare would say yes, and so do the authors of these 187 poems that address timeless concerns but that also include comic elements.
Beginning with the Beats and the New York School and continuing with both marquee-name poets and newcomers, Seriously Funny ranges from poems that are capsized by their own tomfoolery to those that glow with quiet wit to ones in which a laugh erupts in the midst of terrible darkness.
Most of the selections were made in the editors' battered compact car, otherwise known as the Seriously Funny Mobile Unit. During the two years in which Barbara Hamby and David Kirby made their choices, they'd set out with a couple of boxes of books in the back seat, and whoever wasn't driving read to the other. When they found that a poem made both of them think but laugh as well, they earmarked it.
Readers will find a true generosity in these poems, an eagerness to share ideas and emotions and also to entertain. The singer Ali Farka Touré said that honey is never good when it's only in one mouth, and the editors of Seriously Funny hope its readers find much to share with others.
From Frank O'Hara's 'Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!)' and John Ashbery's 'Daffy Duck in Hollywood' to a host of younger poets now writing 'seriously funny' poems, this anthology argues eloquently that poetry is not just the equivalent of somber personal reflection, that indeed from Chaucer to the present, humor, irony, satire, and play are as integral to poetry as they are to narrative prose. Turning the pages of this generous anthology, you will smile and chuckle-and also weep!
—Marjorie Perloff, author of Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media
I loved this book. From its mouth-watering table of contents to its last eccentric, splendid poem, Kirby and Hamby have put paid to the notion that serious poetry can't have a sense of humor. When people ask me to recommend something good to read that's both thought provoking and irresistibly entertaining, poetry anthologies don't generally come to mind. This one will.
—Nancy Pearl, author of Book Lust
During a time when so many of our poets seem afflicted by mere self-importance and an almost-Pavlovian tic of irony, this book celebrates the other kind of funny-the sort that is mordant, absurdist, and keen to both laud and critique the madness and fascinating lunacy of our culture. Hamby and Kirby have assembled a bracing set of poems which remind us anew how closely heartbreak, humor and wisdom literature are aligned. These poems spring from necessity, not from the desire for punch lines.
—David Wojahn, author of Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982–2004
David Bottoms
Lucille Clifton
Wanda Coleman
Michael Collier
Carl Dennis
Stephen Dobyns
Stephen Dunn
B. Fairchild
Beth Fennelly
Allen Ginsberg
Louise Gluck
Albert Goldbarth
Robert Hass
Terrance Hayes
Tony Hoagland
Andrew Hudgins
T. R. Hummer
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Caroline Knox
Yusef Komunyakaa
David Lehman
Thomas Lux
William Matthews
Kevin McFadden
Campbell McGrath
Heather McHugh
Peter Meinke
Phyllis Moore
Harryette Mullen
Lucia Perillo
Michael Ryan
Tim Seibles
Alan Shapiro
Charles Simic
Maura Stanton
James Tate
Robert Wrigley
Dean Young
Kevin Young
Kim Addonizio
Ginger Andrews
Nin Andrews
John Ashbery
Dorothy Barresi
Erin Belieu
Josh Bell
Charles Bernstein
John Berryman
George Bilgere
Richard Blanco
Adrian Blevins
Daniel Borzutsky
Catherine Bowman
Jason Bredle
Geoffrey Brock
Christopher Bursk
Richard Cecil
Maxine Chernoff
Marilyn Chin
David Clewell
Judith Ortiz Cofer
Billy Collins
Gregory Corso
Justin Courter
Jim Daniels
Gregory Djanikian
Denise Duhamel
Martín Espada
Steve Fellner
Richard García
David Graham
Paul Guest
R. S. Gwynn
James Allen Hall
Mark Halliday
Jeffrey Harrison
Bob Hicok
Richard Howard
David Huerta
Bruce A. Jacobs
Rodney Jones
James Kimbrell
Galway Kinnell
Jennifer L. Knox
Kenneth Koch
Ron Koertge
William Logan
Jynne Dilling Martin
Adrian Matejka
Lynne McMahon
Richard Newman
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Frank O'Hara
Sharon Olds
Lawrence Raab
Freeman Rogers
Aidan Rooney
J. Allyn Rosser
Steve Scafidi
Natalie Shapero
Julie Sheehan
Enid Shomer
Martha Silano
Gary Soto
Gerald Stern
Angelo Verga
Paul Violi
Charles Harper Webb
Susan Wood
Franz Wright
Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Ray A. Young Bear
Matthew Zapruder
Bill Zavatsky
