I ache for people who approach poetry with the torturous fear of a patient undergoing a root canal. They are probably exposed to some classic verse in their high school English classes, maybe dead, white, British men and a sprinkling of Whitman and Dickinson. That experience is enough; they see a poem later in life and run from it as if bees are chasing them. I’d like to think that some of these folks make it to college, and by fate or favorable class scheduling, end up in a Literature class that forces them to reexamine poetry. As I said, I’d like to think this to be true, but I’m realistic. To the average person, poetry conjures images of archaic rhyming couplets, Shakespeare, beatniks snapping their fingers, diaries full of feelings, and a horde of other stereotypes. That is enough to scare the bejesus out of most people (and if you are one of those people then you suffer from Metrophobia, the fear of poetry). To use a Whitmanesque ideal, poetry is everything, and that most certainly includes humor. All those people who pass poetry off as elitist and esoteric are happy to create their self-fulfilling prophecies, limiting themselves and missing out on gems, like this poem from Kevin Young.