Alyssa Minasian

Abstract:

When the topic of what is wrong in society comes up in a conversation, a person’s first reaction isn’t to break out in laughter. In fact, this is a topic that is very serious and rarely something that is used as a punchline of a joke. Poets such as Corso, Baraka and Ginsberg tear apart from this standard and use humor to even further bring awareness to these ideas. Their wit, sarcasm and condescending tone throws twists throughout their works that keeps readers at bay. I will be diving into these remarks and bringing out how their funny comments point out things that otherwise would be overlooked or avoided. I will break apart how their humor speaks about the state of America and counterculture ideals. We will be tuning in on how the tone of humor can be used when speaking of a thing that lacks that aspect of humor overall.