National Poetry Month brings out the lighter side of verse

04/07/2002

TOM MAYO / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Light verse. Nonsense verse. Comic poems. Ribald verse. Occasional verse. Satire.

Call it what you may: In the house of poetry are many mansions, and some of them make you laugh out loud.

There is a tradition, a very bad one, that dismisses such poetry as somehow unworthy; but light verse, however it is defined, has been produced by some of the greatest poets, from Chaucer and Jonson and Pope to Lear and Carroll and Auden.

In the month formerly known as "April" but proclaimed by the Academy of American Poets as "National Poetry Month," it may be useful to knock some of the self-importance out of an institution that has arrogated one-twelfth of the year unto itself. Some recently published collections are a reminder that poetry that makes you smile can be read for both pleasure and profit.

One recent title is Martin Gardner's Favorite Poetic Parodies (Prometheus Books, $25). If you are of a certain age, you will remember Mad magazine's delightfully impish parodies of famous poems. Many of the best apparently were written by Frank Jacobs, and five of his poems made it into this collection compiled by the creator of Scientific American's "Mathematical Games" column and, fittingly, editor of The Annotated Alice.

Many of the parodied poems were the instruments of torture brandished by legions of high-school English teachers – Samuel Woodworth's "The Old Oaken Bucket" and Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" bring back particularly vivid memories – and it is oddly satisfying to see them at long last receive the disrespect they deserve.

Straw out of gold

In W.D. Snodgrass's De/Compositions (Graywolf, $16 paperback), the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet rewrites 101 poems – some classics, all by well-known authors – but writes them badly. In a few instances, the revisions are from the original authors. The results are slyly instructive and often funny. Mr. Snodgrass's de/compositions are an artform of a very low sort, but one that only a skilled practitioner could achieve. They retain the form of the original; still, each artless paraphrase lands on the page with a dull, leaden thud.

The author organizes his efforts into five sections according to the essential trait that he has squeezed out of the original: "Abstract & General vs. Concrete & Specific," "Undercurrents," "The Singular Voice," "Metrics & Music" and "Structure & Climax." These titles help, particularly with the de/compositions that you can tell are inferior to the original, but for which you cannot put your finger on exactly what is missing. If, even with these headings, the lesson is not within reach, Mr. Snodgrass has appended a brief commentary at the end of each section that helps identify the missing element from each de/composition.

De/Compositions is a fabulous book for poetry circles, book clubs, and anyone in search of what makes poetry special or trying to improve one's own. Mining the lessons in this book is something like the work of an accident reconstruction expert, as we learn our lessons from the details of failure, but with a sublime difference: There's a laugh on nearly every page.

As Mr. Snodgrass acknowledges in his preface, De/Compositions illustrates W.H. Auden's comment that there are few things funnier than bad poems.

Laugh tracks

Finally, for consistently entertaining poetry that is both humorous and thoughtful, two recent books deserve to be devoured. First, late last year the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet series published Comic Poems , edited by Peter Washington ($12.50). This fabulous collection spans the centuries and offers light poetry by "serious" poets (Graves, Frost, Coleridge, Roethke) as well as the usual comedic suspects.

And speaking of the usual suspects, check out Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (Scribner Poetry, $16 paperback). Ms. Parker's poetry is inevitably described as written with a pen dipped in acid, and her biting wit is much in evidence. Her three poetry collections did not include the poems in this volume, which were published early in her writing career. If you haven't read her poetry, this book is a great place to start. Her "Hate Verses" on such subjects as Women, Men, Actresses, Relatives and Slackers, prove that Ms. Parker was a precocious – and hilarious – vilifier of all she surveyed.

Tom Mayo, an associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University, teaches "Law, Literature & Medicine" at the law school and at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas.