En-lite-en-ment Revealing Itself?

By David Alderson

Susan Holbrook’s Joy is So Exhausting is seriously funny, meaning it takes being funny very seriously. Can we say that the reverse is true, that it is serious, that it addresses or comments on issues of gravity? Or is there an unbearable lightness? 

That, of course, begs the question: what is the redress of poetry? What is its purpose?  Can there only be one purpose? Is it universal?  

Nested in this question is my further question: can the revelation of the very process of creation of a poem answer the redress of poetry? 

These poems are not funny in the way Billy Collins, Charles Simic and Tom Paulin are humorous. Those poets shed light on the absurdity of life, on the natural humour of life and the process of living it.  

If there are only seven ways to make people laugh, can the process of making someone laugh be an eighth? 

I have read extracts of these poems to friends and strangers alike and that has produced laughter.  I’ve made a new friend reading them aloud. Have they produced understanding? Has anyone other than academics been in interested in the process?

Let me start (half way down the page) here. 

These poems make me think of Andy Warhol and the concepts of pop art. They are liberated from the constraints, the masculinity and the heaviness of abstract expressionism – they reveal their process just like Warhol and his silk screens¹. They make us think about the purpose of art, of writing, of language.

Is “Good Egg Bad Seed” (19) nothing but a series of very funny punch lines? Can I truly get the joke / meaning, knowing only the punch line? 

I guess my personal redress of poetry is enlightenment, not en-lite-en-ment. Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin'?²  Should I be happy with the medium and toss the message?  

Why cling to meaning? What is the meaning of a jazz riff? What is the meaning of still life? Of beauty in any form? 

This book delivers on the big question — what is poetry? Why do we care? Can you rank poetry? How do you measure value in poetry? (Sorry to ask you this and supply no answers.)