Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else

by Barbara Hamby (Editor)

Other authorsAllen Ginsberg (Contributor), Sharon Olds (Contributor), Galway Kinnell (Contributor), Maxine Chernoff (Contributor), Richard Howard (Contributor), R. S. Gwynn (Contributor), Charles Simic (Contributor), Robert Hass (Contributor), Billy Collins (Contributor), David Lehman (Contributor), Tony Hoagland (Contributor) — 104 more, John Berryman (Contributor), Lucille Clifton (Contributor), Heather McHugh (Contributor), Geoffrey Brock (Contributor), Paul Guest (Contributor), Susan Wood (Contributor), David Kirby (Editor), John Ashbery (Contributor), David Clewell (Contributor), David Graham (Contributor), Ron Koertge (Contributor), Kevin Young (Contributor), Judith Ortiz Cofer (Contributor), Kenneth Koch (Contributor), Stephen Dobyns (Contributor), Tim Seibles (Contributor), Kim Addonizio (Contributor), Jim Daniels (Contributor), Bob Hicok (Contributor), Carl Dennis (Contributor), Albert Goldbarth (Contributor), Christopher Bursk (Contributor), Stephen Dunn (Contributor), Charles Bernstein (Contributor), Dean Young (Contributor), Lois-Ann Yamanaka (Contributor), James Tate (Contributor), Gary Soto (Contributor), Denise Duhamel (Contributor), William Matthews (Contributor), Michael Ryan (Contributor), Yusef Komunyakaa (Contributor), Erin Belieu (Contributor), Gregory Corso (Contributor), Lucia Perillo (Contributor), Gerald Stern (Contributor), Campbell McGrath (Contributor), Richard Newman (Contributor), David Bottoms (Contributor), Terrance Hayes (Contributor), Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Contributor), Harryette Mullen (Contributor), Michael Collier (Contributor), Catherine Bowman (Contributor), Dorothy Barresi (Contributor), Jeffrey Harrison (Contributor), Andrew Hudgins (Contributor), William Logan (Contributor), Nin Andrews (Contributor), Franz Wright (Contributor), Steve Scafidi (Contributor), Enid Shomer (Contributor), Lawrence Raab (Contributor), Peter Meinke (Contributor), Bruce A. Jacobs (Contributor), Thomas Lux (Contributor), Rodney Jones (Contributor), Alan Shapiro (Contributor), Wanda Coleman (Contributor), Ginger Andrews (Contributor), Charles Harper Webb (Contributor), Gregory Djanikian (Contributor), Marilyn Chin (Contributor), Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (Contributor), Robert Wrigley (Contributor), James Kimbrell (Contributor), Josh Bell (Contributor), Maura Stanton (Contributor), Jennifer L. Knox (Contributor), Richard Garcia (Contributor), Ray A. Young Bear (Contributor), Justin Courter (Contributor), James Allen Hall (Contributor), Adrian Blevins (Contributor), Adrian Matejka (Contributor), Matthew Zapruder (Contributor), Bill Zavatsky (Contributor), Martha Silano (Contributor), Caroline Knox (Contributor), Richard Blanco (Contributor), Louise Glück (Contributor), Richard Cecil (Contributor), Lynne McMahon (Contributor), T. R. Hummer (Contributor), Mark Halliday (Contributor), J. Allyn Rosser (Contributor), Paul Violi (Contributor), Martín Espada (Contributor), Jason Bredle (Contributor), Phyllis Moore (Contributor), David Huerta (Contributor), Steve Fellner (Contributor), George Bilgere (Contributor), Julie Sheehan (Contributor), Frank O'Hara (Contributor), Kevin McFadden (Contributor), Angelo Verga (Contributor), B. Fairchild (Contributor), Natalie Shapero (Contributor), Aidan Rooney (Contributor), Jynne Dilling Martin (Contributor), Beth Fennelly (Contributor), Daniel Borzutsky (Contributor), Freeman Rogers (Contributor)

Paperback, 2010

Status

Available

Call number

PS615 .S375

Genres

Fiction

Publication

University of Georgia Press (2010), 440 pages

Description

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.… (more)