Light Verse and Taste
 

Do you tend to like your own light verse better than that of others?

I do, and I don't think it's because I write (or--given my current output--wrote) it better than others do, but because, beyond the surface technical facility, the value of light verse (usually its humor) is, more than that of other poetry, a matter of taste. Since we tend (yes?) to write to our own taste, I assume most light versers similarly prefer their own.

[I should maybe clarify that I don't mean I would fill an anthology of light verse with my own stuff but that, for instance, in most issues of Light Quarterly I didn't find many poems I liked as well as my own contributions. The same is far from true regarding other sorts of poems.]

I'm prompted now to ask by Jayne's question in Drills and Amusements: Do you like Clerihews? For me, Clerihews, maybe because most of them require less technical facility than other light verse forms, exaggerate the effect. My own Clerihews tickle me, some greatly; those of others tend to bore me. There are exceptions, of course. Because I'd hate to be misunderstood, I'll repeat myself: this doesn't lead me to believe that I write better Clerihews than others do, only that mine are better tailored to my own taste in humor.

Do you other light versers similarly prefer your own poems?

I may be exceptional, but for me the answer is no. I struggle with light verse; I attempt funny and end up dark. So I'm happy to read other people's! Good on all of ya. If I weren't about to run out the door, I'd grab my R.P. Lister now, or my Updike collected.

Editing back to make it clearer that I really am answering Simon's question as asked: No, I don't find it true that my own light verse is better tailored to my own taste. It may be that I have less evidence to go on because I only write light once in a while.

I don't have a consistent response to my own poems. Sometimes I look at them and marvel at my genius, but on another occasion I may read the same poem and be shocked at how utterly lame it is.

Well, I can't believe I am not the Light Poet Laureate of anywhere, but, yes, I mostly prefer my own light verse. Now you've got me thinking whose other light verse I like. But we better not get into that

OK, Richard Armour.

I write more light verse than any other kind of poetry and if I'm starting a poem from scratch, as it were, then yes, I pander to my own taste in humour, but many D & A competitions involve trying to think up a funny premise that may not be on my radar at all! That makes things more difficult . . .

. . . and that's when I'm far more impressed with the work of Brian Allgar, Basil Ransome-Davis, Bill Greenwell, Melissa Balmain, Roger Slater, Ed Conti, Rob Stuart, to name but a few, . . . than I am with my own!

(Oh, and that Max Goodman bloke as well ;))

Jayne

I always like the work of Wendy Cope, X.J. Kennedy, Melissa Balmain & a few others better than mine.

I probably write more light verse than anything else - or lightish verse, to be more correct - but many of my poems can't decide which they are, and I often tend to combine both approaches in the same poem, so that neither I nor the listener/reader knows exactly what I'm after. (A little like I am in person, I suspect.)

As a pure lighter-than-air verse writer I don't regard myself as consistently, or even inconsistently, good Instead, I try to find a voice which mixes humor and drama and seriosity and sarcasm and a dozen other attitudes, and sometimes it's funnier than others, and when it works I can usually tell it, and when it doesn't work I can depend on people like you to tell me so.

In other words - like much of life - it depends.

I second Mike Juster's choices. I do think that light verse needs to be formally tighter than other types. One misplaced syllable can ruin a limerick.

Max Goodman
Gets in a good mood, man,
When he rehearses
His own verses.

Thanks to all who've chimed in--and all who still will. I'm delighted that so many of my own favorite light versers are sharing their thoughts about this!

There are lots of writers of light verse whose works I go back to over and over because I find it so delightful. I re-read Dorothy Parker, Wendy Cope, Gail White, Julie Kane, Melissa Balmain, Sophie Hannah, J. V. Cunningham, W. S. Gilbert, Ed Shacklee, and quite a few others. On the other hand, there are many different kinds of light verse, and I am not equally amused by all of them. My own tastes lean toward the witty and satirical, so that kind of verse is the kind I read most often. I will admit that I don't like equally everything the above-mentioned writers have written, but the things I like most I tend to like more than my own work, so I go back to them to remind myself of what the best light verse looks like and just to give myself a laugh. Light verse is a form of self-medication. It always makes me feel better afterwards.

Susan

I, for my part, lean most readily towards wit and satire. I think of satire as overlapping light verse but also what I do not think of as light verse. I echo Susan in that light verse happens to be my best anodyne.
Dorothy Parker and the Art of Light Verse by John Hollander proved an interesting read, having recently happened upon it. It touches on the question of what constitutes light verse, how it is done well, among other things.

I do like a few on my light verse efforts better that the winners on the D and A comps; but usually I see the winners earned their prizes by a better treatment of the rubric. When I think "Geez, I wish I had thought of that!", as I read someone else's verse, I acknowledge that I have to try harder next time. The same goes for being published in the several light verse print and online journals.

The D and A comps force me to address topics that I otherwise never would consider, and sometimes I am really pleased with the results. Otherwise, I'd write far too many poems on Maine rednecks getting their comeuppance for doing dumbass things.

There are several Spherians (many of them have already been mentioned on previous posts) who are true masters of the genre, and I have laughed and learned a great deal from them.

Light verse favors adherence to form, rhyme, and meter, and a certain amount of wit. It requires thought and skill, and can reward its creator more than its reader. It's fun to write this stuff.

My favorite dead light versifiers are Ogden Nash, Samuel Hoffenstein, Dorothy Parker, and many poets in FP Adams' anthology. Also, the chronically sad E A Robinson, who lightened up enough to write Miniver Cheevy and Richard Corey

I can’t write light verse. It’s strange because IRL people say I have a good sense of humor -- it just doesn’t come out in writing. I admire you who can write it.

James Fenton cites this double dactyl in his Introduction to English Poetry, and I’ve always remembered it because it’s so witty (like Wendy Cope’s poem on giving up smoking):


Higgledy piggledy
Vladimir Nabokov—
Wait! Hasn’t somebody
Made a mistake?

Out of such errors, Vla-
dimir Nabokov would
Sesquipedalian
Paragraphs make.

(from a New Statesman competition)

I have books by Mike Juster and Susan McLean,& I always marvel at how good they are, let alone Joe Kennedy.

There are other folks I admire (O let's name a few - Max, Melissa, Julie, Ed Conti) - but the truth is, on a good day I think of them as peers.

Full disclosure!

There is modern light verse I like - Wendy Cope, for instance, and the work on the Sphere - but my favorite light versifiers are a century old or more: Hilaire Belloc, Max Beerbohm, Lewis Carroll, W.S. Gilbert. This is very likely a matter of what I expect to find in light verse, and therein lies my answer to the question. It's also probably a matter of what I know and return to; I am more adventurous in other reading.
Max Beerbohm wrote this:

"In London, at the Bodley Head; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons."
This little line, when nicely read, iambically runs.

Cheers,
John

Oh - my own funny poems I do like, but I'd hesitate to call them light verse.

I grew up with the masters of light verse and came to "serious" poetry late - when I was pushing 70. As others have said, LV is definitely its own art, more exacting as to meter and rhyme than other kinds of formal poetry. It took me a while (and was liberating) to realize that one's muse can be comic without necessarily restricting one to light verse.