Remarks on "7 Ways Poetry and Comedy are Incestuous"

Alice Osborne, a professor at Wake Tech, recently wrote an article about the "incestuous" relationship between comedy and poetry. She explains, mostly through technicality, how poetry and comedy share many of the same elements. For example, she writes, "poems, like comedy, must be economically written". This means there must be a perfect balance in explanation, not too much but not too little. She also explains the role of surprise in both jokes and poems. In jokes, the cause of laughter is the surprise, the unexpected punchline. In poems, often times the apex of a poem comes when the voice changes tones, or the poem takes on a new voice all together.

In these ways, poetry is similar to comedy, but I think Osborne missed the big picture. Poetry and comedy share much more than characteristics and technical structure, they share the same parent. Both comedy and poetry are born from truth, without that, neither would exist.

Take five minutes out of your day and listen to some standup comedy. In any routine done by a comedian, you will find him connecting with the audience and making them laugh because he is telling the truth. Poets use the same approach. Although they aren't usually looking for laughter, they still ground their poems in truth in order to elicit other emotions.

Poets and comedians alike use literary devices in order to evoked their desired response. Louis C.K., a well known comedian, once told this joke. "A burrito is like a sleeping bag for ground beef." The audience erupted with laughter. The joke itself has no context, yet when analyzed, is understood as a simple metaphor. However, given the lack of context, element of surprise, and imagery, it engaged the audience and made them laugh.

Truth is the common ground between poetry and comedy. Osborne's article touches on smaller similarities like structure and irony, but it does not mention anything about truth, brutal honesty, and relevance.

http://aliceosborn.com/7-ways-poetry-and-comedy-are-incestuous/