The lecture analyzes the mechanisms of humor underlying two minor poetic genres which appeared on the Internet in the 2000s and received the names Pirozhok (‘a small pie’) and Poroshok (‘powder’). Poems of these genres are quatrains written in iambic quadrameter. In Pirozhok poems, there is no rhyme scheme, and in Poroshok poems, the fourth line is truncated to two syllables and rhymes with the second. As in anecdotes and several other genres, in Pirozhok and Poroshok poetry an important role is played by an unexpected ending. The latter has been termed pointe (‘punchline’). For a Poroshok poem, this punchline is a regular feature. Often it does not just violate the reader’s expectations but contradicts the beginning of the verse forcing the reader to reinterpret it. Such reinterpretation may consist in changing the assessment of the situation or in “transformation”, that is, replacing the character. Regular transformations are pointed out, among which are the following: thing → person, person → thing, person → animal, etc. Most frequent is the reciprocal transformation of men and cats. The transformation motive binds objects in the manner of a metaphor.

Tatiana Slepova is a PhD candidate at the Russian and Slavic Studies Department at The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She specializes in Marina Tsvetaeva's oeuvre. In 2021-
2022, she worked at the Department of Literary and Art Criticism and Publicism at the
Faculty of Journalism at Lomonosov Moscow State University.