Maryann Corbett
There's no recipe for humor, in poetry or any other type of writing, and that's why it's so difficult to achieve, and so magical. The sly double meaning, the incongruity, the pratfall, all the tried techniques can fall flat, as was painfully shown in a Washington Post magazine article (November 16, 2008) about how The Onion puts an issue together. We can never say for certain what will seem funny. We only know, as Justice Potter Stewart said about obscenity, that we know it when we see it. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Worksheet
IF you are disgusted with your life as it is,
sick of the dust on the blinds,
the dripping faucet, the ceaseless cat hair,
and the fact that you will never, not ever,
cook like his mother,
check this box
and write on line 15a THE GREATER OF
(a) the amount on line 42
of your federal form 1040, OR
(b) the amount you would need
to be deliriously happy, UNLESS
(1) the amount referenced in (b) exceeds
the gross domestic product, OR
(2) you could solve the immediate problem
by eating half a carton of ice cream,
IN WHICH CASE
if (1) is true, STOP.
You cannot take the Disgusted with Life credit.
Clean the damn blinds. OR
if (2) is true, be grateful
that there is no ice cream in the freezer.
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Maryann Corbett earned a doctorate in English language and literature and expected to be teaching Beowulf and Chaucer and the history of the language. Instead, she has spent the last 27 years working as an in-house writing teacher, editor, and indexer for the Minnesota Legislature. This proximity to the legislative sausage grinder makes it necessary for her to turn to poetry as a calming influence. Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in River Styx, Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, Christianity and Literature, Measure, The Dark Horse, Unsplendid, and other journals in print and online. Her chapbook Gardening in a Time of War was published in 2007 by Pudding House.