Loopy Limerick
 

The original item has been edited out so it can be submitted for publication.

Sorry, all gone.
Thanks, Maryann.

- Allen Tice

Martin (and others),

thinking that limericks are under-rated as works of art, and that they all too easily escape their author's control, I was about to make a change in my little example (and also to ask some moderators whether a "serious" limerick oughtn't be placed -- or moved to -- the protective umbrella of Non-Metrical verse), when WHAMBO, you laid out a clever sequence of fifteen in a row on a single subject !!

I am humbled.

Just the same, I wonder if you wouldn't want yours in Non-Metrical or some other sheltered place, since you almost certainly will want to publish them somewhere (and you might not know where yet).

This entire page is secure since I put this in Drills and Amusements with a "{noindex}{/noindex}" code out of fear of being jumped on again by one of our nice moderators, and since I probably didn't pay enough attention to a relevant discussion or statement of policy; but where do efforts at "serious" limericks go? Could they be posted in Metrical? Could this thread be moved there, or split into two threads: one for Martin, and one for me? What's the current consensus on limericks?

- Allen Tice

Well, old brick, since you have now fathered a multiple-particpant thread that will probably attract limerick buffs (and there are lots lurking in the bushes) the best thing, methinks, would be to leave it in John's capable hands and under the aegis of the code you installed.

D&A also draws comments and cheers from other participants (as you will see most recently perhaps in the Bad Poetry thread).

You won't get much more than that at Non-Met, methinks, but FYI there is no law, by-law, statute, decree, edict, rule, or guideline against posting a single limerick at our esteemed non-metrical site.

If it is non-metrical, and you call it poetry, we are all ears!

I beg to differ here on nomenklatura. I am a youngish, robust, free-range brick, if I be brick.

Nonetheless, thank you for the advice. However, following the reasoning given in Post #6 below, I will put future limericks in Metrical.

(Who's mortar, if I'm like brickish?)


PS from post #7: Metrical it shall be.

- Allen Tice

I'm a little puzzled by the discussion. Limericks are - when done properly - are metrical and rhymed. Why the mention of non-Met?

Secondly - the bouncy, jaunty form seems to lend itself to humor - and twists. Which is what yours does, Allen. It's a keeper.

But a limerick without a twist is like a ham sandwich without the ham or mustard - or cheese, or pickles, or lettuce. A string of them has to snap, crackle and pop to work - each has to be strong on its own. When there are inversions, they have to be clearly deliberate and humorous, not forced and flailing. Ergo - sorry, Martin, but no gold stars for stringing together fifteen limericks unless they're fifteen very good limericks.

Additionally, limericks are so common, and so easy that I think it would be more of a challenge if the thread had more of a theme. Just to say, "Hey, gang, let's write a limerick!" doesn't really click for me. Everybody will drag out the used limericks they have in the attic, and away we'll go. Why not pick a theme, Allen - "hair", for example, since you started it, or even dogs, or Presidential dogs (have to stay one step ahead of Martin, who has trunks of doggie poems in every room of his home), or dogs with bad hair days.

Michael: Yay! I wanted to go to Metrical.
Thanks for the kind word on the Beef-Hive hairdo. Much appreciated.

OK, Metrical it shall be, for the future.


- Allen Tice

Michael, what would we do without you! I thought there was a line at non-met which gathered in limericks but I see that there isn't.

This is what it says.

Free verse, unmetered rhymed verse, forms such as sestinas, pantoums, ghazals, etc. when they are unmetered, prose poems, and syllabics -- post & critique. Serious writing and professional attitude are expected.

I must have dreamed it. Or maybe I am just a big old hog and want everybody to come to Dee and Me (sounds like a comedy team but we are serious as all get-out).

Folks, don't come dragging your old limericks and suchlike to Non-Met. We don't want them.

And Alan, how many times do I have to tell you that "brick" is a compliment.

And as for who is mortar, I guess it is Michael, he helps hold the structure together with his sharp memory and long experience.

And others who help keep me straightened out. Thanks, Jan.

Can I say again that the man who knows all there is to know about limericks is Robert Conquest and the definitive essay on them is to be found in Conquest's 'The Abomination of Moab'? I think limerick sequences, I mean a poem each of whose stanzas is a limerick, are a separate art form.

I tried to write a sad limerick but failed - the form insists on comedy. Can anyone bring a tear to this leathery old cheek with a sad one?

Maybe it depends on whose cheek? I once gave a beginning class three poems written about the death of a child, hoping to teach them something about tone and form. The author was unidentified in all cases; the poems were Ransom's "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter," X. J. Kennedy's "Little Elegy," and this, which I created for the exercise:

......The deeply grieved dad sadly said
......As he sat at the edge of the bed:
............"It was just yesterday
............That I watched her at play,
......And now she's most grievously dead."

It was voted the most effective of the three. I trust they were a bit more discerning at the end of the course.

I think they are called multilimericks. I've also heard them called limerick-poems. So, yes, they are a different genre. Therefore, my long multilimerick (above) is not relevant to this thread.

But I'm glad you posted it. The Speccie had a competition for limerick precis of Jane Austen novels. Wendy Cope wrote some good ones - a limerick series precising The Waste Land. The first one began

In April one seldom feels cheerful

Genius!

(April is the cruelest month, John, especially for bawdy bards)

The cruelest month's gotta be April
Cause you can't write a limerick on April
there's not one smutty rhyme
for erotic springtime
There's not even a clean rhyme for April.

Nice one, Janice! Is there anything more irritating in poetry than those limericks of Lear's which have L1 & L5 'rhyming' with the same word?

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'

This is to alert interested parties (hello, Martin Elster) that (with Maryann Corbett's permission) I have expunged the original limerick so it can be mailed out.

Further, there is a real chance that the entire thread may go away forever in 24 hours, since its cornerstone is now missing.
If you or your estate want anything on the thread, get it in hard copy prontissimo.

Best to all,

- Allen

Here's a melancholy limerick I wrote ages ago: -

The bindweed and rubbish hold sway there
and terminal rust's come to stay there
but when the wind sings
round the seesaws and swings
it's like ghostly children still play there.

Clive, that is beautiful

Thanks! *blush*

I agree.

Martin

Clive,
at first I wanted to commit an unfeeling knee-jerk reaction and mock (or not reply at all). Fortunately, I have a good deal of forehead and thought it through. Maybe it's the identical rhyme used three times, or something else, but karma went to a new level, and I sensed a whiff of something extraordinarily natural to English that in some way parallels the salt water in the original Anthology couplets.

Can it be developed beyond this case? ?

- Allen

Thanks Martin.

Allen - the rhyme word, as I see it, is not "there" but the word that precedes it. "There" is demoted, so in effect, it's a feminine rhyme ending each line.

Great piece of work, Clive - very publishable, I would have thought. However you do cheat slightly with those extra syllables which take the edge of the silly sing-song of the orthodox limerick and allow you just a bit more scope to write something sincere and moving.