Profession: Poet

Profession: Poet is a new monthly blog feature exploring craft and identity in poetry by Hanoch Guy, who writes poems in both English and Hebrew.

HUMOR: The importance of not being earnest

  Humor can spice up your poetry. I don’t know how much attention you have paid to humor in poetry. Do you have any favorite poets who use humor?

Writing humorous poetry requires a change of perception, observation, and focus.

It begins with looking at the world with amusement and maybe a chuckle.

The basis of humor can be incongruence and wanting to release stress or fear.

As with any new skill, it requires learning new terms and practices.

Some elements of humor are:

  • irony

  • sarcasm

  • exaggeration

  • ridicule

  • wit

  • surprise

  • rhyme

  • incongruence

  • reversal

  • distortion of proportion

  • surprise

  • absurdity

We should be aware that humorous is not the same as funny.

While humor is a set of different language uses and is objective, funny is subjective and depends on the speaker as well as the audience’s sensitivity or lack of it. There are a few overlaps between the two such as exaggeration, irony and sarcasm.

 Here are a few examples of humorous poems:

I sit at my grave and weep
Try hard not to fall asleep

Dan was always cranky
I thought I’d offer him a hanky

Ghosts have as a good a right
To love the night and fear the light

For me, a spider is delight
For you  detest and spite

Enjoy the following prompts:

  • Challenge: rhyme it.

  • A cat on dog’s_________________.

  • There once was a porcupine_________________.

  • Wise and dull_________________.

  • Rain is pain_________________.

  • Purple can_________________.

  • Hollow brain_________________.

Humor is a whole different world.  Explore, enjoy.

 

Hanoch Guy Ph.D, Ed.D spent his childhood and youth in Israel. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch has taught Jewish Hebrew literature at Temple University and poetry and mentoring at the Muse House Center. He won awards in the Mad Poets Society, Phila Poets, Poetry Super Highway and first prize in the Better than Starbucks haiku contest. His book, Terra Treblinka, is a finalist in the North Book Contest. Hanoch published poems in England, Wales, Israel, the U.S., and Greece. He is the author of nine poetry collections in English and one Hebrew book.