Thursday, June 22, 2006

Go read a literary magazine

The July/August issue of Poetry is their humor issue, and I'm happy to tell you to go buy it. Not only do I know two of the contributors, but unlike the last humor issue, this one is actually really funny. I haven't read the whole issue, but it includes some real gems, including:
  • X.J. Kennedy's brilliant parodies.
  • Dean Young beginning poems with laugh-out-loud funny lines, then veering into nearly incomprehensible synaptic leaps.
  • Joan Murray rewriting "We Real Cool" to hilarious effect.
  • Peter Kane Dufault's painful, and intentionally so, poem about Guantanamo.
The prose is less entertaining, though it has its moments. I'm hoping they keep the humor issue as a tradition; it's nice to see a mix of comic poems that seem both light and lasting. Plus, they nailed the cover. Moral: go get the humor issue.

2 comments:

Cindy said...

I'm sold on your endorsement. (Nothing is worse than bad "funny" poetry. May as well write about death and herpes.)

Unknown said...

You say that like death is a bad thing.