Thanks for these great contributions--a great start to my morning.

But I have to make a terrible confession: I don't get the McMillan "Meaning of Life." I know it will be like cutting up a living thing to explain to me how it's funny, but perhaps somebody's willing.

I have to admit my ignorance as well, re The Meaning of Life. I played it twice and still didn't "get it". Another bad brain day?

Nah then, Janice.
 

Sorry Maryann and Janice. My wife and I were rolling on the floor laughing at your bewilderment. The mystery to me is how Bill gets this.

It makes me realise how difficult humour is to explain. This is regional, related to Yorkshire dialect and South Yorkshire ways of speaking. Ian is parodying plain-speaking local folk wisdom. These are the sort of phrases you hear in the chip-shop or the canteen or the bus-shelter, attempts to fathom the meaning of life. He scrambles them all up and brings out their absurdity and black hilarity. Everything is surly and dark and getting darker, yet full of subversive humour.

In performance the poem's last line always gets a great roar of laughter/recognition from the audience who recognise their own black humour reflected back at them.

Now Bill needs to tell us.

Call it a poem, or call it a prose poem, but whatever, it cracks me up -- Jame Tate's "The List of Famous Hats":

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.
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Petra, I seem to be playing the regular straight-man, deadpan role today. Tell me what happens in your head to make you laugh. The passage is absurd, and full of unexpected changes in direction and awkward situations, but it doesn't trigger a laugh at all for me.

Sometimes I do know what's tickling me. A rhyme will do it, like interpolate/purple ate in the Nash poem. By the way, Susan, "Very Like a Whale" has long been a favorite of mine too.

As Andrew says, surprise is important, and that rhyme is a surprise.

Shifts and mismatches in tone are good reliable tools. Yesterday's poem on The Writer's Almanac relies on that mix.

Steve, about the McMillan poem, I need an even closer close reading. In the context of chip shops, what does "Half a dozen eggs" mean, and how is it an answer to "You're looking poorly"? And is that last comment being uttered straight or in irony there in the chip shop? Sorry to be so hopeless.

I wouldn't expect everyone to laugh at Tate's poem. But I like absurd humor, or silly-absurd. The poem is weird and humorous to begin with, but this is where I laugh out loud:

the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap.

The pictures that jump to mind are very funny to me. The tricorn (three-cornered) bathing cap alone is funny.

A fairly obvious name in a discussion of humour is P.G. Wodehouse. However, not everyone knows that he wrote a great deal of excellent comic poetry in addition to his novels and short stories. Here's a link to one of his funniest poems, "Good Gnus". It's even funnier in context, as is explained by the person posting the poem in the thread I've linked to.

I love the parenthetical comments in the poem. And "a kopje or a cactus" is a definite LOL line for me (never thought I'd use this abbreviation but it seems appropriate).

Thank you very much, Cally!

It comes from my misspent youth: far too much time hanging out with ex-pat brits on the Promenade des Anglais. ;)

Thanks,

Bill

This one still cracks me up:

Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken páprika, she glanced at me,
twice.
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
and only the fact of her husband (& four other people)
kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying
'You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes
have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon
(despairing) my spumoni.—Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de world, wif feeding girls.

—Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes
downcast ... The slob beside her feasts ... What wonders is
she sitting on, over there?
The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
—Mr. Bones: there is.

Not quite as funny as Ovid on the same situation, but almost. Almost! ;)

Thanks,

Bill