No true comedy has earned the Academy Award for Best Picture since "Annie Hall" in 1977. Thirty-four years and counting. Doesn't that seem strange?

The ancient Greeks celebrated both comedies and tragedies, and Shakespeare wrote more of the former than the latter. Modern film and television audiences love comedy too. And why not? Laughter feels great. As a psychological state, it's generally preferable to angst and sorrow.

I think that's the problem — if it feels good, we don't trust it. We are acculturated to believe that humor is somehow less substantial than somberness. Comedy is deigned the province of "low culture," whereas "high culture" must comport itself with greater sobriety.

This bias colors the Academy's choices for Best Picture. It also affects what people expect out of poetry.

There are two lessons I would like my writing students to learn about poetry and humor:

(1) Humor is just as valid an emotion in poetry as any other emotion.
(2) Just because something is funny does not mean it isn't also serious.

The second point is especially important, and is why I find our cultural bias against humor as a "high art" to be so unfortunate. The best comedy carries as much intellectual and emotional weight as any tragedy.

In that spirit, I want to share with you four poems by my fifth and sixth grade students this year which are both wonderfully funny and genuinely moving. The first one is by Foster L.:




Howler



There is one word to define

my life...,

Loud,

I spend 50% of the day bellowing

because I have to go and lose sight

of the group when I come back,

And when I find them grooming

time is already over,

When we go feeding the only

thing I end up catching is one

of my comrades' tails,

And at night I have to sleep with

Little Stevey who always wets the

bed and has bad dreams,

And when I wake up it starts all

over again

I am so amused by the voice of this poem's speaker — a poor, downtrodden howler monkey. At the same time, it carries echoes of the difficulties of all our human childhoods. The disappointment of finding one's way back to the group only to discover that grooming time is already over: Now that's tragedy.

The next poem is by Gabe S.:

Beaver Bathtub



Whenever I have a bath in my beaver bathtub I always get splinters. The beavers get wood stuck in their teeth. Whenever I reach for the soap I grab at LEAST one beaver’s tongue. I try to rub myself down with their tongues but before I realize it’s not soap, they bite my hand. I run around barefoot in the summer, so after I run in the mud my feet kinda look like wood. So when I get in the bathtub they start biting my toes. So when they get bloody, I have to get back in the darn tub. I hate that beaver bathtub but it’s the only one we can afford until I get a job. I used all my money to buy a basketball hoop and a basketball, but I shoulda bought a new bathtub. I hate that beaver bath tub!

Gabe's "beaver bathtub" scenario is hilariously clever, but like Foster's poem, it has echoes of real tragedy, with its catch-22 scenario (the tub makes him bloody which makes him have to get back in the tub) and its tone of lament for bad decisions which the speaker now must pay for.

Today's third poem is by Miranda M.:

Fifty Million Muffins



Fifty Million Muffins

I have made and will make some more.

A bully said they were terrible.

Of course, he was bluffing, I am sure.



I only use the finest live ants

And only the freshest dirt — Clean as a void!

Oh, and I'm sure you'd enjoyed

The moldy shredded underpants!



You see, the big bee in the bin

Was bred, then imported in Dublin!

There are many more that buzz in the store-

Their sting gives muffins a zing!



No expensive chocolate chippings

Instead we use owl droppings!

Hey, why are you so green?

Your eyes have lost their curious gleam!

Maybe they'll get it back when

You see I made you a muffin

Whereas Gabe's and Foster's poems affect stances of baleful complaint, Miranda's humor stems from her speaker's delusional optimism. This baker's enthusiasm for her products is not very convincing given the list of ingredients, but she is lovably persistent.

Intellectually, this works on a couple of levels. On one hand, it pokes fun at advertising culture, and the way the most unhealthy and unappetizing products (Mountain Dew, anyone?) are pitched to us as delicious and invigorating. At the same time, we sympathize with the speaker, who means well after all — she just wants to give you a muffin! — and nevertheless is received with distaste. Don't we all know how that feels?

Finally, to round out today's selections, let's look at a zany poem by Jesse Y.:




Justin Bieber Wants Your Carrots



I know the general

outline of confusion.

What flavor of ice cream do

you want? Grass flavor?

Dishwater flavor? You

sit waiting for an answer,

then Justin Bieber falls

from the sky and tells

you to give him all of

your carrots, or he will

smack you with a stapler.

You don’t want to get

hit by a stapler, and you

don’t want to lose your

carrots. You sit thinking

for a minute, an hour,

a month you are so

confused that you don’t

realize that a panda has

just ate all of your

hair, and some kids painted

your face green. Justin

Bieber still waits. It

starts to rain

fried chicken. You forget

about Justin and you stand

there, puzzled, “WHY IS

IT RAINING FRIED

CHICKEN!??” a man with

a purple mustache yells.

You look at him, you

wonder why his mustache

is purple, you somehow

think that the mustache

is cotton candy, so

you eat it. Then a

black hole teleports

you to a world filled

with computers. It wasn’t cotton candy, you

smash one of them. You

get teleported to a van

of nothing, you are

just plain confused. You

stand there, then Justin

Bieber comes back and

steals your carrots, you

shout “WHY?” to the sky

as Justin flies in a potato

to Mars. A pile of

burritos fall on you.

You scream in confusion

You are screaming because

this poem is over, this poem

has left you confused.

Jesse's poem derives its humor from exuberant absurdity. You might argue it does the same kind of work as Lewis Carroll's nonsense: Bizarre things keep happening, and the main character has to keep puzzling them out. Sometimes the world feels that daunting and mysterious.

My favorite moments in the poem are the unappetizing choices: grass flavor or dishwasher flavor? Get hit with a stapler or lose your carrots? The poem evokes a sense of helplessness reminiscent of the difficult dilemmas in which we all sometimes find ourselves.

Fifth and sixth graders have a rich and varied sense of humor, and use humor in many compelling ways to reflect the world they observe and experience. These four poems are just a fraction of the hilarious and moving poems in the class's forthcoming book, "Why Is the Sky Purple?" If you want to see more, come to our book release party this Friday at 7 p.m. at Nicola's Books.

Scott Beal is a stay-at-home dad and the Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School. He will lead workshops this summer at the Neutral Zone for K-12 teachers, for middle school-aged writers, and for high school writers. For more information and/or to register, visit www.neutral-zone.org.