A Poet Walks into a Bar: Using Humor in Poetry
Dates: June 3-30 (Four weeks, with two week archive period)
Format: Online Workshop (Asynchronous with optional weekly Zoom office hour, more info)
A poet walks into a bar . . . Jokes and punchlines aren’t merely the province of stand-up comedians or late-night talk show hosts. In Poetics, Aristotle identified comedy as one of the five forms of poetry. While humorous poetry has been around since Aristophanes and Catullus, contemporary poets such as Tony Hoagland, Dean Young, Harryette Mullen, and Wendy Cope have used wisecracks and wit effectively whether to get belly laughs or to make a serious point.
In this four-week asynchronous online workshop, we’ll read poems that employ different types of humor, including satire, parody, wordplay, and irony. We’ll explore specific techniques and elements that poets use to create humor and compose humorous poems ourselves.
Payment Options
Early Bird: $295 (through May 15)
Regular: $315 (while seats last)
Pay It Forward: $335 (while seats last)
Note: The Pay-It-Forward price is an opportunity to take this class and support someone else while you're at it. The extra monies support scholarships as well as future free and low-cost classes.
Teaching Artist
Jo Pitkin
Jo Pitkin is a native of the Hudson Valley. She earned a BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Kirkland College—one of the first undergraduate creative writing degrees in the United States—and an MFA in Poetry from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. She is the author of a chapbook, The Measure (Finishing Line Press, 2007), and four full-length books—Cradle of the American Circus: Poems from Somers, New York (The History Press, 2012); Commonplace Invasions (Salmon Poetry, 2014); Rendering (Salmon Poetry, 2017); and Village: Recession (Salmon Poetry, 2020). She is also the editor of the anthology Lost Orchard: Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community (SUNY Press, 2014).
Jo’s award-winning poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including The New York Review of Books, Little Star, Salamander, Southern Humanities Review, Terrain.org, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod International Journal, Stone Canoe, Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (Codhill Press, 2010), A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley (Codhill Press, 2013), Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press, 2015), Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose by Bright Hill Poets & Writers (Bright Hill Press, 2017), and The Poetry of Capital (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020).
After working as an editor at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, Jo pursued a career as a freelance educational writer and is the credited author of more than forty books for Kindergarten through Grade 12 students, including Bill Pickett: Rodeo King and Stargazers: Astronomy in Ancient Times. She has taught college writing at Marist College and is currently a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn. She lives and works within walking distance of the Hudson River. www.jopitkin.com
