{"id":1180,"date":"2018-10-05T13:57:23","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T17:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/?page_id=1180"},"modified":"2018-10-31T11:10:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T15:10:02","slug":"robert-pinsky-on-jokes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/robert-pinsky-on-jokes\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Pinsky, On Jokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

from\u00a0“A Symposium on Jokes” in the fall 2015 issue of\u00a0The Threepenny Review.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s clever, but it\u2019s not funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

So says Simon, an eleven year old with a good mind for words, reading jokes aloud in a flat, skeptical voice from the back seat of the car. The book is entitled Seriously Silly School Jokes<\/em> and they are funny only when Simon gracefully\u00a0makes<\/em> them funny with his what-a-yawn delivery.<\/p>\n

A joke is not a witticism, and though it may be written it is something more than a piece of writing. For me the joke, like the lyric poem, is a vocal form. Its words on a digital screen or a page are mere notation, distinct from the actual joke as a musical score is distinct from actual music.<\/p>\n

As the great Sid Caesar compactly says: \u201cComedy is music. It has a melody.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is equally true of both the traditional one-liner and the traditional long-form, with its set-up, elaboration, misdirection and punch line.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne-liner\u201d is not literally accurate. Some of the classics come with three lines. For instance, Henny Youngman\u2019s:<\/p>\n

Man-goes-to-the-doctor.
\nHe-tells-the-doctor, \u201cIt hurts me when I do this.\u201d
\nThe doctor says, \u201cDon\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The joke needs to be delivered rapidly, giving a one-line feeling, but with meaningful phrasing, including jazzy little pauses that might be a bit different with each telling. Maybe a semi-italicized rising of pitch to the same note, let\u2019s call it an A-sharp, on \u201churts\u201d and \u201cthis\u201d in the second line, then in the third line partways down the scale for \u201cthe doctor says\u201d and back up to A-sharp on the second \u201cdo,\u201d at the end. I\u2019ve typed \u201cDon\u2019t do that,\u201d but the binary toggle between roman and italic, like the hyphens I\u2019ve used to evoke speed, is too crude. It\u2019s more of a three-eighths italics on \u201churts\u201d and maybe seven-sixteenths on \u201cthis.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the stand-up master Youngman delivers this three-part joke as one rapid line. His joke feels like a single line, it sounds like a single line, and by his artistry of both composition and delivery the comic makes it be a single line. In a word, lyrical.<\/p>\n

Like a musician, Youngman feels the joke anew with each telling, and that feeling shapes the phrasing. The first, introductory movement is a kind of title, telling us the genre of what we will hear: it will be a doctor joke. (Youngman had a million of them.) The second movement is the set-up, and the third is the punch line, delivered by the doctor and by the comedian. I like the triple repetition, with the word \u201cdoctor\u201d appearing in all three parts, as a matter of rhythmical emphasis as well as form. The doctor is the poem\u2019s hero: he slays the dull dragon of expectation.<\/p>\n

I have violated one of my favorite jokes with transcription. I have blunted it with description. But these transgressions don\u2019t matter because the joke, with its little quantum of profundity, survives and endures beyond analysis and study. It rises above explanation. In that, too, it resembles a lyric poem.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robert Pinsky is the only member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on both The Colbert Report<\/em> and The Simpsons<\/em>. He created the Favorite Poem Project during his tenure as US Poet Laureate. According to Catherine Con, he once tried to open a Coca Cola bottle with his office furniture.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from\u00a0“A Symposium on Jokes” in the fall 2015 issue of\u00a0The Threepenny Review. \u201cThat\u2019s clever, but it\u2019s not funny.\u201d So says Simon, an eleven year old with a good mind for words, reading jokes aloud in a flat, skeptical voice from the back seat of the car. The book is entitled Seriously Silly School Jokes and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8422,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":41,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1180\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}