I was recently reminded of Sleary’s words, to Mr Gradgrind, in “Hard Times”:
“People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t
be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it”.
It happened in this manner. I fell into conversation with an acquaintance in the pub, who mentioned that a friend had said words to the following effect:
“Poetry should be serious. Proper poetry isn’t humorous”.
I am the first one to defend serious poetry. The expression of heartfelt melancholy as in Keats “Ode to a Nightingale”, or Dowson’s “They are not long the weeping and the laughter”, engenders in me a profound sense of connection with the poet, long since deceased. I feel as they felt or as close to it as it is humanly possible to feel. Serious art (whether poetry or otherwise) has the power to shake us out of our complacency, make the strong man weep or simply cause the reader to reflect deeply on existence and her place in it.
Humorous verse does, in contrast cause us to laugh outloud, as in Lewis Carroll’s wonderful Jabberwocky, or Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-cat”, To possess the power to make others laugh uproariously is a real talent and those who have the capacity to do so should not be dismissed merely owing to the fact that their work is not “serious”. To misquote Sleary:
“A man can not always be serious”!
Perhaps it is attitudes such as that expressed by my acquaintence’s friend (that poetry must be serious), which help to explain (at least partially) why so many people maintain they “don’t like poetry”.