People don’t much associate poetry with laughter. That’s wrong. There’s a lotta laughs in the history of poetry.

Limericks, for sure. Several of the better-known limericks are, oddly, set in Nantucket, like the one that goes…well, never mind that. Anyway, the limerick is a poetic form that lends itself in English to humor; you don’t find many unfunny limericks. And I didn’t want to try; why spoil centuries of fun?

“Humor is a door into the serious,” says Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States, and maybe the most popular American poet ever to hold that office. Collins’ humor is gentle, but deceptively so. It can take you deep, as in the poem called “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House,” which begins with the line: “The neighbor’s dog will not stop barking.”

It’s hard to combine the humorous with the erotic, but the poet e.e. cummings pulled off the trick:

“my sweet old etceteraaunt lucy during the recent

war could and whatis more did tell you justwhat everybody was fighting

for,my sister

Isabel created hundreds(andhundreds)of socks not tomention fleaproof earwarmersetcetera wristers etcetera, mymother hoped that

i would die etceterabravely of course my father usedto become hoarse talking about how it wasa privilege and if only hecould meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietlyin the deep mud et

cetera(dreaming,etcetera, ofYour smileeyes knees and of your Etcetera)”

I was in high school when I first read that one. It seemed so transgressive, so dirty. It was a simpler time.

You can find bitter, biting humor in poetry, if that’s what you’re looking for. The great 20th Century American poet Dorothy Parker worked this vein as well as anyone ever has. This charming ditty of hers is called “Resumé”:

“Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp:

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.”

Some poems read like a bit by a surrealist standup comic, and none is weirder and funnier than James Tate’s “How the Pope is Chosen,” which includes lines like these:

“Popes are very intelligent.

There are three different sizes.

The largest are called standard Popes.

The medium-sized ones are called miniature Popes.

I could go on like this, I could say:

‘He is a squarely built Pope, neat,

well-proportioned, with an alert stance

and an expression of bright curiosity,’

but I won’t.”

I think maybe I saw that “expression of bright curiosity” when I met Pope Leo XIV:

Anyway…

Shakespeare can be hilarious, of course, both in service of character development and for the sheer laughs of the wordplay. In Much Ado About Nothing, Dogberry, the chief constable of Messina, seems an idiot, until his silly self-importance somehow results in the triumphant exposure of an evil plot, which he earnestly comprehends with a typical dogberryism: “O villain! thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this!”

As for wordplay, nothing beats Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet: “If love be rough with you, be rough with love; prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.”

I mean—that’s just nasty, but the groundlings roared.

We know from Shakespeare’s ostentatious cleverness—all those inside Elizabethan jokes and elaborate insults, the banter and the badinage so intricate that we can’t follow it without footnotes these days—that he was a witty man. Wit was much prized in his time; too much. Sometimes, it’s almost blinding. Yes, he certainly could write in that courtly show-off style as well or better than any of his university-educated contemporaries. But don’t you get the deeper feeling that Shakespeare also must have been a funny man? A guy whose laugh everyone knew because it was so ready and so infectious and so true to the moment? I do. Only a man who knew the transformative soul-power of a good laugh could summon Falstaff to life in play after play, the greatest comic creation in all of literature, and have him say in in Henry IV Part 1, in that heartbreaking foreshadowing of his actual ending, “Banish plump Jack, and banish/all the world.”

The world needs laughter. That’s what Shakespeare and all our bards of grins and giggles and guffaws understand. We need it now more than ever, I think. Laughter is medicine to heal our stress. Laughter is nourishment for the struggles ahead. Laughter is a kind of prayer, a way of keeping hold of our humanity in a dehumanizing time.

Anyone who likes poetry has their own favorite funny poems that they cherish. Feel free to share yours in the comments today. Here’s one of mine.

I discovered this poem a few years back, when we lived in London and I was still reading to our kids (how I miss those days). It’s by Roald Dahl, the British author known best for his children’s books, including Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Dahl’s stories are laced with shadows and cruelties—too much so for me, though kids love them. They reflect what was (is?) an approach among some of the English to raising children: formal, cold, and distant. And then at a young age the little ones got hurried off to boarding schools, where too often they were brutalized (Dahl was, and you can sense it in his books).

But this poem is nice and nasty. And it seems to me it might have a heartening relevance for us today. Enjoy!

As soon as Wolf began to feelThat he would like a decent meal,He went and knocked on Grandma's door.When Grandma opened it, she sawThe sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,And Wolfie said, "May I come in?"Poor Grandmamma was terrified,"He's going to eat me up!" she cried.And she was absolutely right.He ate her up in one big bite.But Grandmamma was small and tough,And Wolfie wailed, "That's not enough!I haven't yet begun to feelThat I have had a decent meal!"He ran around the kitchen yelping,"I've got to have a second helping!"Then added with a frightful leer,"I'm therefore going to wait right hereTill Little Miss Red Riding HoodComes home from walking in the wood."He quickly put on Grandma's clothes,(Of course he hadn't eaten those).He dressed himself in coat and hat.He put on shoes, and after thatHe even brushed and curled his hair,Then sat himself in Grandma's chair.In came the little girl in red.She stopped. She stared. And then she said,

"What great big ears you have, Grandma.""All the better to hear you with," the Wolf replied."What great big eyes you have, Grandma."said Little Red Riding Hood."All the better to see you with," the Wolf replied.

He sat there watching her and smiled.He thought, I'm going to eat this child.Compared with her old GrandmammaShe's going to taste like caviar.

Then Little Red Riding Hood said, "But Grandma,what a lovely great big furry coat you have on."

"That's wrong!" cried Wolf. "Have you forgotTo tell me what BIG TEETH I've got?Ah well, no matter what you say,I'm going to eat you anyway."The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.She whips a pistol from her knickers.She aims it at the creature's headAnd bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.A few weeks later, in the wood,I came across Miss Riding Hood.But what a change! No cloak of red,No silly hood upon her head.She said, "Hello, and do please noteMy lovely furry wolfskin coat."