Hilarity (with Maybe a Pinch of Pain): Theories of Comedy in Poetry with Patrick Donnelly on Zoom

Theories of comedy go back to antiquity in many cultures, and we’ll familiarize ourselves with some of those. Then we’ll reverse-engineer some genuinely funny poems to learn what we can about how they work, how they achieve their effects, what kinds of materials, tones, and non-funny elements they can include, how what people find funny differs across cultures and individuals, and especially how funny poems achieve emotional significance.

NB: This class is taught on Zoom and capped at 15. You will get the Zoom link when you register. Scholarships are due on May 15, 2024. Please make sure to read all course policies before registering for a class.

Patrick Donnelly is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Little-Known Operas (Four Way Books, 2019); Willow Hammer (Four Way Books, spring 2025) is forthcoming. About Donnelly, Gregory Orr wrote “everything he writes is suffused with tenderness and intelligence, lucidity and courage.” Donnelly is program director of The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts, as well as director of the annual Poetry Seminar there. Former poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, Slate, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review, and many other journals. Donnelly’s translations with Stephen D. Miller of classical Japanese poetry were awarded the 2015-2016 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Donnelly’s other awards include a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program Award, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and an Amy Clampitt Residency Award.