Favorite poets with a sense of humor

[Elaine]

I know of two that are very funny: Jack Prelutsky [see Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens and Shel Silverstein [see I Won't Hatch].

[Gerry]

Those are, of course, both children's writers, too. It's hard to write "funny" but a lot of the prose poets are funny (Russell Edson, for instance) in a surrealist kind of way.

[Robert]

I like the funny bones of Lux, Hoagland, some Billy Collins, Sirowitz and many others. A terrific anthology of funny contemporary poets: Seriously Funny (ed. Barbara Hamby and David Kirby--themselves funny poets...)

http://www.amazon.com/Seriously-Funny...

There isn't enough funny poetry out there!

[Gerry]

Lux has got some hysterical poems. And what about Dobyns? I think of his fine book Cemetery Nights with those what the dead do poems...

[Frank]

There's a very funny poet in Los Angeles named Rick Lupert --> http://poetrysuperhighway.com/rick/ab...

[Gerry]

George Guida can be very funny in a self-effacing way. What about Denise Duhamel (though I admit, her sense of line leaves me scratching my head).

[Donna]

Bob Hicok is the very best! He has a number of books, and many poems online as well.

[Joy Gaines-friedler]

Susan Browne - title's like "Get Outta Dodge"and "Hot Flash 2:00 am" - she's funny and beautifully mortal.

[Gerry]

I don't know her work, Joy. I'll have to check it out.

[Debbie]

I like Tom Lux for funny - his "I Love You Sweatheart" is one of the poems that got me hooked on poetry. I am always delighted when I find a piece that encompasses the weightier issues of an experience together with humor because humor is representative of our desire to overcome. I'll have to explore the poets listed here :)

[Gerry]

Deb, what I like about Tom's humor is that there's a heart behind it all: it's never just funny for funny's sake. He's always more than just clever.

[Mark]

Two other poets that are often funny and their most recent collection: Mary Koncel's You Can Tell the Horse Anything and Kevin Griffith's Denmark, Kangeroo, Orange.

I agree, Hoagland, Kirby, and Lux are often funny as well.

[Michael]

Billy Collins is a favorite. Though often he deals with dark things, Raymond Carver also wrote some lines in his poems that had me laughing aloud. For classics, I still love Shakespeare and Robbie Burnes.

[Al]

Kevin Stein is often very funny. The humor in Rodney Jones's poems is often overlooked. Speaking for myself, unless the humor serves a larger purpose for the poem, just being funny for the sake of being funny seems rather pointless to me. (I don't feel this way in real life).

[Gerry]

There's always Denise Duhamel who can be laugh-out-loud funny at times. Though her prosody has fallen apart recently.

[Dan]

Russell Edson. His best poems, in my view, manage to be both haunting and hilarious at the same time.

[Gerry]

Edson is brilliant, though he sometimes relies on penis jokes to the detriment of the greater humor in his work.