Title Page; Contents; Notes on Contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Theories of Humor and Modern Poetry; Notes; Chapter 1: Humor and Authority in Ezra Pound's Cantos; Notes; Chapter 2: Cummings's Erotic Humor; Talking Dirty; Wild Laughter in the Throat of the City; Coda: Cummings among the Black Humorists; Notes; Chapter 3: Emotional Comedies: Lorine Niedecker's "For Paul"; Notes; Chapter 4: Laughing in the Gallery: Melvin Tolson's Refusal to Hush; Black Literature: No Laughing Matter; A Philosopher's Wit; The Bridge between Poet and Critic; The Critic's Smile; Constructive Laughter

NotesChapter 5: Poetry and Good Humor: Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop; 1; 2; 3; Notes; Chapter 6: Convention and Mysticism: Dickinson, Hardy, Williams; Notes; Chapter 7: Phyllis McGinley: Defending Housewifery with a Laugh; McGinley: A Brief Introduction; McGinley's Cultural Climate; Thorns Become Swords: Disarming the Skeptics and Defending the Housewife; Defending the Honorable Institution; Mimicking Content in Form; Notes; Chapter 8: Tell Me the Truth: Humor, Love, and Community in Auden's Late 1930s Poetry; Posing the Problem: Light Verse and the Poet's Community

Letters from Iceland, Lineage, and Auden's AudienceHumor against Fascism; The Individual in the Group; The Individual in Love; Conclusion: "Individual Beauty" and the Comic Community; Notes; Chapter 9: Merrill, Comedy, Conversation; Notes; Chapter 10: "This Comic Version of Myself": Humor and Autobiography in John Ashbery's Poetry and Prose; Notes; Bibliography; Index; Index