- At August 12, 2005
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
0
An appropriate quiz from Peter Pereira after the humor in poetry talk…
|
the Wit
|
|
CLEAN COMPLEX DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you’re probably an intellectual, but don’t take that to mean pretentious. You realize ‘dumb’ can be witty–after all isn’t that the Simpsons’ philosophy?–but rudeness for its own sake, ‘gross-out’ humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it’s also the best, in my opinion. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart – Woody Allen – Ricky Gervais |
So the talk went well on Thursday, I think there were about 40 people there, and not only were the other readers good, even the open mikes were surprisingly accomplished. One of the other readers read hilarious essays on, for instance, what Dr. Phil’s advice to Proust might have been. A good time was had by all. I discussed the dictionary definitions of different modes of poetry, like satire, parody, farce, irony, and black humor, and then provided different poetry examples for each (James Tate, John Berryman, Billy Collins, Dorothy Parker and Lewis Carroll all made appearances.)
Now I’m trying to finish a review of Denise Duhamel’s Two and Two, mess around with MS # 2 a bit, and print out new copies of MS #1 for another round of submissions.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
