Art & Creativity Quote by George Murray

Humor, for George Murray, isn’t a garnish; it’s a high-wire act. In poetry especially, the smallest tonal slip can turn a deliberate joke into a nervous tic, a flippant dodge, or worst of all, a plea to be liked. That’s the “fine line” he’s naming: comedy can sharpen the poem’s intelligence, but it can also flatten its stakes. The reader feels that difference instantly, because poems trade on compression. There’s less room to “walk it back” if a punchline lands wrong.

When Murray says humor is “harder to write,” he’s pushing against the romantic myth that funny equals effortless. Successful poetic humor has to do double-duty: it must deliver the quick spark of surprise while still carrying pressure underneath it - emotional, moral, observational. A laugh without residue is just entertainment; poetry demands aftertaste. The craft problem is timing (where the turn happens), diction (how colloquial you can get before the spell breaks), and control (how to be playful without becoming careless).

“Harder to keep the respect of the reader” is the real tell. He’s acknowledging a cultural bias: seriousness is still treated as the passport to profundity. Humor risks being misread as avoidance, or as a performance that protects the speaker from vulnerability. Murray’s subtext is almost a dare: if you can be funny without begging for approval, and without sacrificing precision, you’re not diluting poetry - you’re expanding what it’s allowed to admit about how people actually think.