Download or read book Very Bad Poetry written by Kathryn Petras and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing very bad poetry requires talent. It helps to have a wooden ear for words, a penchant for sinking into a mire of sentimentality, and an enviable confidence that allows one to write despite absolutely appalling incompetence. The 131 poems collected in this first-of-its-kind anthology are so glaringly awful that they embody a kind of genius. From Fred Emerson Brooks' "The Stuttering Lover" to Matthew Green's "The Spleen" to Georgia Bailey Parrington's misguided "An Elegy to a Dissected Puppy", they mangle meter, run rampant over rhyme, and bludgeon us into insensibility with their grandiosity, anticlimax, and malapropism. Guaranteed to move even the most stoic reader to tears (of laughter), Very Bad Poetry is sure to become a favorite of the poetically inclined (and disinclined).
Download or read book Seriously Funny written by Barbara Hamby and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can serious poetry be funny? Chaucer and Shakespeare would say yes, and so do the authors of these 187 poems that address timeless concerns but that also include comic elements. Beginning with the Beats and the New York School and continuing with both marquee-name poets and newcomers, Seriously Funny ranges from poems that are capsized by their own tomfoolery to those that glow with quiet wit to ones in which a laugh erupts in the midst of terrible darkness. Most of the selections were made in the editors' battered compact car, otherwise known as the Seriously Funny Mobile Unit. During the two years in which Barbara Hamby and David Kirby made their choices, they'd set out with a couple of boxes of books in the back seat, and whoever wasn't driving read to the other. When they found that a poem made both of them think but laugh as well, they earmarked it. Readers will find a true generosity in these poems, an eagerness to share ideas and emotions and also to entertain. The singer Ali Farka Tour said that honey is never good when it's only in one mouth, and the editors of Seriously Funny hope its readers find much to share with others.
Download or read book Funny written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Egghead written by Bo Burnham and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A strange and charming collection of hilariously absurd poetry, writing, and illustration from one of today's most popular young comedians?Ķ Bo Burnham was a precocious teenager living in his parents' attic when he started posting material on YouTube. 100 million people viewed those videos, turning Bo into an online sensation with a huge and dedicated following. Bo taped his first of two Comedy Central specials four days after his 18th birthday, making him the youngest to do so in the channel's history. Now Bo is a rising star in the comedy world, revered for his utterly original and intelligent voice. And, he can SIIIIIIIIING! In Egghead, Bo brings his brand of brainy, emotional comedy to the page in the form of off-kilter poems, thoughts, and more. Teaming up with his longtime friend, artist, and illustrator Chance Bone, Bo takes on everything from death to farts in this weird book that will make you think, laugh and think, "why did I just laugh?"
Download or read book Behold Our Magical Garden written by Allan Wolf and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn vital processes and procedures about gardening through different types of poetry.
Download or read book The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep written by Allan Wolf and published by Candlewick. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In powerful, vivid verse, the master behind The Watch That Ends the Night recounts one of history’s most harrowing—and chilling—tales of survival. In 1846, a group of emigrants bound for California face a choice: continue on their planned route or take a shortcut into the wilderness. Eighty-nine of them opt for the untested trail, a decision that plunges them into danger and desperation and, finally, the unthinkable. From extraordinary poet and novelist Allan Wolf comes a riveting retelling of the ill-fated journey of the Donner party across the Sierra Nevadas during the winter of 1846–1847. Brilliantly narrated by multiple voices, including world-weary, taunting, and all-knowing Hunger itself, this novel-in-verse examines a notorious chapter in history from various perspectives, among them caravan leaders George Donner and James Reed, Donner’s scholarly wife, two Miwok Indian guides, the Reed children, a sixteen-year-old orphan, and even a pair of oxen. Comprehensive back matter includes an author’s note, select character biographies, statistics, a time line of events, and more. Unprecedented in its detail and sweep, this haunting epic raises stirring questions about moral ambiguity, hope and resilience, and hunger of all kinds.
Download or read book Priestdaddy written by Patricia Lockwood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED ONE OF THE 50 BEST MEMOIRS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS BY THE NEW YORK TIMES SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: The Washington Post * Elle * NPR * New York Magazine * Boston Globe * Nylon * Slate * The Cut * The New Yorker * Chicago Tribune WINNER OF THE THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR “Affectionate and very funny . . . wonderfully grounded and authentic. This book proves Lockwood to be a formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she pleases.” – The New York Times Book Review From Booker Prize finalist Patricia Lockwood, author of the novel No One Is Talking About This, a vivid, heartbreakingly funny memoir about balancing identity with family and tradition. Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met—a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates “like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972.” His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church’s country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents’ rectory, their two worlds collide. In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence—from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group—with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents’ household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother. Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.
Download or read book Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals written by Patricia Lockwood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed second collection of poetry by Patricia Lockwood, Booker Prize finalist author of the novel No One Is Talking About This and the memoir Priestdaddy SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times * The Boston Globe * Powell’s * The Strand * Barnes & Noble * BuzzFeed * Flavorwire “A formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she pleases.” – The New York Times Book Review Colloquial and incantatory, the poems in Patricia Lockwood’s second collection address the most urgent questions of our time, like: Is America going down on Canada? What happens when Niagara Falls gets drunk at a wedding? Is it legal to marry a stuffed owl exhibit? Why isn’t anyone named Gary anymore? Did the Hatfield and McCoy babies ever fall in love? The steep tilt of Lockwood’s lines sends the reader snowballing downhill, accumulating pieces of the scenery with every turn. The poems’ subject is the natural world, but their images would never occur in nature. This book is serious and funny at the same time, like a big grave with a clown lying in it.
Download or read book Rationale of the Dirty Joke written by G. Legman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do people tell dirty jokes? And what is it about a joke's dirtiness that makes it funny? G. Legman was perhaps the foremost scholar of the dirty joke, and as legions of humor writers and comedians know, his Rationale of the Dirty Joke remains the most exhaustive and authoritative study of the subject. More than two thousand jokes and folktales are presented, covering such topics as The Female Fool, The Fortunate Fart, Mutual Mismatching, and The Sex Machine. These folk texts are authentically transcribed in their innocent and sometimes violent entirety. Legman studies each for its historical and socioanalytic significance, revealing what these jokes mean to the people who tell them and to the people who listen and laugh. Here -- back in print -- is the definitive text for comedians and humor writers, Freudian scholars and late night television enthusiasts. Rationale of the Dirty Joke will amuse you, offend you, challenge you, and disgust you, all while demonstrating the intelligence and hilarity of the dirty joke.
Download or read book Poentry written by Samantha Baines and published by Choir Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humorous poems from award-winning comedian and actress Samantha Baines.
Download or read book Chocolate Cake written by Michael Rosen and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When I was a boy, I had a favourite treat. It was when my mum made . . . CHOCOLATE CAKE! Ohhh! I LOVED chocolate cake. Fantastically funny and full of silly noises, this is Michael Rosen's love letter to every child's favourite treat, chocolate cake. Brought to life as a picture book for the first time with brilliant and characterful illustrations by Kevin Waldron.
Download or read book My Hippo Has the Hiccups written by Kenn Nesbitt and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kenn Nesbitt's hilarious poetry is adored by kids. They just can't get enough of the great beats, wonderful imagery, and good ol' belly laughs his poetry contains! With over a hundred poems included, most of them new but some old favorites too, My Hippo Has the Hiccups is a laugh-out-loud good time. The audio CD features lots of the great poem readings and zany humor that make Kenn one of the most widely sought school speakers in the country. From angry vegetables to misbehaving robots to the boy who is only half a werewolf, these are all officially poems Kenn totally made up: my robot does my homework! | i bought a pet banana! | when vegetables are angry... Be sure to visit Kenn online at the world's most popular poetry site for kids: poetry4kids.com
Download or read book Arrow written by Sumita Chakraborty and published by Carcanet Press Ltd. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2021 Shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize 2021 Arrow is a debut volume extraordinary in ambition, range and achievement. At its centre is 'Dear, beloved', a more-than-elegy for her younger sister who died suddenly: in the two years she took to write the poem, much else came into play: 'it was my hope to write the mood of elegy rather than an elegy proper,' following the example of the great elegists including Milton, to whose Paradise Lost she listened during the period of composition, also hearing the strains of Brigit Pegeen Kelly's Song, of Alice Oswald and Marie Howe. The poem becomes a kind of kingdom, 'one that is at once evil, or blighted, and beautiful, not to mention everything in between'. As well as elegy, Chakraborty composes invocations, verse essays, and the strange extended miracle of the title poem, in which ancient and modern history, memory and the lived moment, are held in a directed balance. It celebrates the natural forces of the world and the rapt experience of balance, form and - love. She declares a marked admiration for poems that 'will write into being a world that already in some way exists'. This is what her poems achieve.
Download or read book My Dog May Be a Genius written by Jack Prelutsky and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever encountered an underwater marching band, a pig in a bathing suit, a pet orangutan, or a witch in a hardware store? Have you ever sat with a skunk in a courtroom, shopped for a dinosaur, or conversed with a Bupple, a Wosstrus, a Violinnet, or a Celloon? You will have, once you′ve read this exuberant collaboration from Jack Prelutsky and his "partner in crime"∗ James Stevenson. The "reigning czars of silliness"∗ have once again teamed up to bring readers an irresistible collection of poems that will have tongues twisting, imaginations soaring, and sides aching with laughter. The result is genius, indeed. ∗Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book Pretty Good Joke Book written by Garrison Keillor and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 2,200 Jokes from America’s favorite live radio show A treasury of hilarity from Garrison Keillor and the cast of public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion. A guy walks into a bar. Eight Canada Geese walk into a bar. A termite jumps up on the bar and asks, “Where is the bar tender?” Drum roll. The Sixth Edition of the perennially popular Pretty Good Joke Book is everything the first five were and more. More puns, one-liners, light bulb jokes, knock-knock jokes, and third-grader jokes (have you heard the one about Elvis Parsley?). More religion jokes, political jokes, lawyer jokes, blonde jokes, and jokes in questionable taste (Why did the urologist lose his license? He got in trouble with his peers). More jokes about chickens, relationships, and senior moments (the nice thing about Alzheimer’s is you can enjoy the same jokes again and again). It all started back in 1996, when A Prairie Home Companion fans laughed themselves silly during the first Joke Show. The broadcast was such a hit that it became an almost-annual gagfest. Then fans wanted to read the jokes, share them, and pass them around, and the first Pretty Good Joke Book was born. With over 200 new and updated jokes, the latest edition promises countless giggles, chortles, and guffaws anyone—fans of the radio show or not—will enjoy.
Download or read book Humorous and Nonsensical Poems written by Liz Miles and published by Heinemann-Raintree Library. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines humorous and nonsensical poetry, providing readers with the skills to explore the meaning in a poem and discussing the techniques the poets used to create them.
Download or read book That Peculiar Affirmative written by Jonathan Farmer and published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poems are social. They reach out, however crookedly, to another person, however imperfectly imagined. And sometimes they not only embody but enact those things that we might value in the other parts of our social lives--kindness, for example, or joy--as well as the complications those values entail. Looking closely at poems from Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Terrance Hayes, Spencer Reece, Robert Pinsky, Claudia Rankine, Jericho Brown, Patricia Lockwood, Ross Gay, Paisley Rekdal, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and many others, That Peculiar Affirmative tries to understand what it means for a poem to be humble or humorous, decorous or confident, and what that tells us not only about poems, but also about the larger world of social virtues, personal vulnerabilities, and political problems that define so much of our time together and apart. "If I had to imagine an ideal reader or critic of poetry it would be Jonathan Farmer, and his soulful book of essays, That Peculiar Affirmative, would be my ideal book. These essays constitute more than a series of discrete engagements with modern and contemporary poets; together they conduct nothing less than a spiritual autobiography that tracks the growth of the writer's moral and aesthetic imagination. There is no book like this in its combination of personal revelation and writerly attention to technique, in its thrilling recreation of the mind through poetry redefining what it thinks and feels." --Alan Shapiro "Along the front line of a new generation of poetry commentators, I place Jonathan Farmer beside Meghan O'Rourke, Philip Metres, and Solmaz Sharif. It's a very fertile moment for poetry, and Farmer is one of the first critics I look to now for clarity and depth. His readings in That Peculiar Affirmative are uniformly brilliant, unswayed by partisan aesthetics, and marked by real joy in intellectual and social engagement with the lyric poem. Even his subtitles point to this rare odic impulse; he writes "on" decorum and humility, "on" politics and humor, even as he applies contemporary issues of racial and sexual identity, for instance, to an old-school devotion to close reading. His touchstones--Sidney and Shakespeare, Kristeva and Durrell--are as aptly rangy as his contemporary subjects, from Brooks and Bishop to Ross Gay, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, or Claudia Rankine. I greet this critic and his book with celebratory gratitude." --David Baker "That Jonathan Farmer writes in his introduction that in this book, he 'has tried to make something worth your time' is characteristic of the critical voice you will find in this thoughtful, probing, and reflective book of essays. The 'I' of That Peculiar Affirmative is modest while its eye is expansive and inclusive; Farmer's curiosity is palpable, both in the questions he poses and the questions he hears in the poems he reads. In beautiful and generous essays on subjects of perennial poetic relevance and contemporary sociopolitical relevance, Farmer rethinks topics like joy, decorum, humility, kindness, humor, and political discourse itself through insightful readings of contemporary poets as varied as Ross Gay, Patricia Lockwood, Paisley Rekdal, Jill McDonough, Mary Syzbist, Terrance Hayes, Claudia Rankine, and more, as well as a vast array of interlocutors across time, such as Hamlet, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop (whose phrase gives this book its title), Lucille Clifton, and even Allie Brosh of the iconic web comic Hyperbole and a Half. As befits an exploration of the social life of poetry, That Peculiar Affirmative is a book that will not only speak to you about poetry, affect, and politics, but will speak with you. Farmer has met his goal and then some: this book is dazzlingly and rewardingly worth your time." --Sumita Chakraborty
