"Humor in poetry as a tool to speak back to power" ~ Dorsey Craft | Poet of the Week 5.5.24
6 new poems & an interview with May Sarton NH Poetry Prize winner & AGNI poetry editor!
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Dorsey Craft is the author of Plunder (Bauhan Publishing 2020), and the winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Narrative, Mississippi Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She currently teaches at the University of North Florida and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni.
You Meet a Boy
You meet a boy named for a river. You meet a boy who ignores you at soccer practice and messages you online after school. You meet boys who squeeze their own nipples, telling each other milk will come out. You meet boys you want to touch you, that you want to stare at for hours. You memorize their names, but speak to none. You meet a boy who touches you in a hall of mirrors, your reflections jagged and unfathomable. You meet a boy who touches you with his foot in a public pool. You meet a boy with blue eyes who can barely look at you when you touch him. You meet a boy with glasses, a boy with acne, a boy with scars on his arms, a boy you know is stupid. You are always on the verge of crying. At soccer, boys kick you, slap you, bruise you. Do it again, you pray. You tell lies about them to your friends, to yourself. You meet a boy named for a gun. He sits next to you at the back of the bus. You sit up so straight, his thigh against yours a razor burn. You study its heavy meat. You listen to music, connected by earbuds, wire dangling thin between your heads. He says nothing. He is seventeen and you are fourteen. You barely breathe in the seat. You make yourself empty, your face a darkened screen.
I am always drawn to humor in poetry, especially as a tool to satirize or speak back to power.
I wouldn’t say that I am consciously looking for moments that need levity. It’s more that I am kind of a silly person, and the way I experience the world reflects that.
In “Rejected Persona,” the speaker envisions her desire “down a well, Silence of the Lambs-style,” and this is because I think about Silence of the Lambs basically every day. It’s a big text in my life, so it comes up in my poems. If that reads as funny because of the pop culture reference next to the speaker’s depressed state, or whatever, then hooray!
Honestly, my problems themselves feel a little ridiculous to me, even as they overwhelm me. If my speaker thought the worst problem in the world was her not feeling sexy after giving birth, that would not be a speaker people wanted to listen to. My hope is that occasional humor diffuses that complain-y quality a bit.
I am always drawn to humor in poetry, especially as a tool to satirize or speak back to power. For instance, I recently read Threa Almontaser’s poem “When White Boys Ask to See My Hair” from her collection The Wild Fox of Yemen. Although the poem has serious concerns, it is infused with bitingly funny lines like “My hair fell off the long line at Mt. Everest trying to take a selfie.”
Too many poets to name are bringing humor into unexpected places in their work, and I am absolutely here for it.
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