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Perilous Laughter
Feb. 5th, 2015 11:34 amOnce upon a time, while teaching on a creative writing course, I nearly did a student a serious injustice. Considering a folder of six pieces of work, I’d marked one low. It had seemed laboured, clichéd and a bit hectoring. Fortunately we always put plentiful comments on our marking to explain why it was as it was, so the student in question was able to realise what I'd missed, point it out and ask for a re-mark.
What I'd missed was, quite simply, that the piece was meant satirically. And you may say she shouldn't have needed to point that out, but she didn't, really. It wasn't brilliantly funny, but its intent should have got through to me. The reason it didn't, of course, was that like all my colleagues I had been marking scripts for hours at the time, my eyes and brain were tired and if A Modest Proposal had appeared in front of me, I might well have supposed Swift to be making a serious point. And no, I shouldn't have been marking while tired, but given the deadlines we were set, it was very hard not to.
This was before double-marking became general, which was supposed to stop this sort of thing happening. I'm not sure it would, though, not only because two people could easily enough be marking in a jaded condition, but also because, I suspect, humour is the easiest thing to miss, particularly in poetry. Not only is it very much a matter of personal taste, a lot of people, critical readers especially, don't seem ever to expect or welcome frivolity or levity in poems, nor to see how humour can be used to leaven a "serious" theme in poetry just as it can in prose. There are a few poets from whom we expect it, because they've developed a reputation for it, but very often they are denigrated, classed as "versifiers" even, by the same kind of people who think tragedy must inherently be more serious and important than comedy.
At least, though, readers recognise what these poets are trying to do. In a worse position, arguably, are poets who don't have this reputation but just want to use humour once in a while, as another tool in the box. If it's searing irony or satire, they'll probably be OK (though of course Defoe ended up in the pillory when The Shortest Way With Dissenters was taken in deadly earnest, and I have seen students assume the same of A Modest Proposal). But more gentle frivolity, oddly enough, can be far more dangerous, maybe not to the poet's personal safety, since pillories fell out of fashion, but certainly to the poet's critical reputation; he or she may be seen as insufficiently serious or committed. I don't know why there should be this notion that humour undermines serious intent; maybe nobody nowadays reads any Aristophanes. But certainly many poetry reviewers these days seem immune to it, and it isn't, I think just a matter of finding it badly handled (which humour often can be); it's rather that they are dismissive and mistrustful of it as a technique. I recall a number of reviews over the last few years that seem to be complaining of anything less than deadly seriousness and attention to "issues" in the poets concerned (I could give examples, but then I'd have to name individual poets and reviewers, which is known in these parts as "putting your heid in a bees' byke").
It's long been known that humour online is hard to communicate, since we have neither tone of voice nor body language to guide us, which is why some folk have suggested, both seriously and in jest, creating a new Irony Font or Irony Icons. But I think it can be equally dodgy between the covers of a book of poetry, simply because many are not expecting to meet it there. Maybe this is finally something back-cover blurbs are good for – nobody really reads or takes note of them except the lazier kind of reviewer who wants to be told what to think, but perhaps if they carried instructions like "Every word is not necessarily to be taken in dead earnest"?
There is also a quote from Ernest Hemingway: "A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl."
What I'd missed was, quite simply, that the piece was meant satirically. And you may say she shouldn't have needed to point that out, but she didn't, really. It wasn't brilliantly funny, but its intent should have got through to me. The reason it didn't, of course, was that like all my colleagues I had been marking scripts for hours at the time, my eyes and brain were tired and if A Modest Proposal had appeared in front of me, I might well have supposed Swift to be making a serious point. And no, I shouldn't have been marking while tired, but given the deadlines we were set, it was very hard not to.
This was before double-marking became general, which was supposed to stop this sort of thing happening. I'm not sure it would, though, not only because two people could easily enough be marking in a jaded condition, but also because, I suspect, humour is the easiest thing to miss, particularly in poetry. Not only is it very much a matter of personal taste, a lot of people, critical readers especially, don't seem ever to expect or welcome frivolity or levity in poems, nor to see how humour can be used to leaven a "serious" theme in poetry just as it can in prose. There are a few poets from whom we expect it, because they've developed a reputation for it, but very often they are denigrated, classed as "versifiers" even, by the same kind of people who think tragedy must inherently be more serious and important than comedy.
At least, though, readers recognise what these poets are trying to do. In a worse position, arguably, are poets who don't have this reputation but just want to use humour once in a while, as another tool in the box. If it's searing irony or satire, they'll probably be OK (though of course Defoe ended up in the pillory when The Shortest Way With Dissenters was taken in deadly earnest, and I have seen students assume the same of A Modest Proposal). But more gentle frivolity, oddly enough, can be far more dangerous, maybe not to the poet's personal safety, since pillories fell out of fashion, but certainly to the poet's critical reputation; he or she may be seen as insufficiently serious or committed. I don't know why there should be this notion that humour undermines serious intent; maybe nobody nowadays reads any Aristophanes. But certainly many poetry reviewers these days seem immune to it, and it isn't, I think just a matter of finding it badly handled (which humour often can be); it's rather that they are dismissive and mistrustful of it as a technique. I recall a number of reviews over the last few years that seem to be complaining of anything less than deadly seriousness and attention to "issues" in the poets concerned (I could give examples, but then I'd have to name individual poets and reviewers, which is known in these parts as "putting your heid in a bees' byke").
It's long been known that humour online is hard to communicate, since we have neither tone of voice nor body language to guide us, which is why some folk have suggested, both seriously and in jest, creating a new Irony Font or Irony Icons. But I think it can be equally dodgy between the covers of a book of poetry, simply because many are not expecting to meet it there. Maybe this is finally something back-cover blurbs are good for – nobody really reads or takes note of them except the lazier kind of reviewer who wants to be told what to think, but perhaps if they carried instructions like "Every word is not necessarily to be taken in dead earnest"?
There is also a quote from Ernest Hemingway: "A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl."
