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Unread 01-15-2012, 11:51 AM
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ChrisGeorge ChrisGeorge is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayne Osborn View Post
Hi Chris,
Were you thinking of submitting these? Only, they're not clerihews, strictly speaking.

Lewis Turco's 'The Book of Forms' (Third Edition)* says: The clerihew, a particular type of epigram, was invented by E. Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). It is a quatrain in dipodic meters rhyming aabb, the first line of which is both the title and the name of a person:

SIGMUND FREUD
Became annoyed
When his ego
Sailed to Montego.

SIGMUND FREUD
Became more annoyed
When his id
Flew to Madrid. (There are two more stanzas...)

KARL JUNG
Found himself among
Archetypes
Of various stripes.

*Just received, this afternoon, Turco's new 'Revised and Expanded Edition'; there's no specific mention of clerihews in it, though, so I'll be hanging onto my old copy, which I was going to give away!

Jayne
Hi Jayne

Maybe that was the original conception that the first line of the clerihew should be taken up entirely with the name of the subject of the poem, although there appear to be a number of examples since written that don't follow that rule, as seen here at "What Is a Clerihew?" on verse.org.uk, so I think some leeway is allowable, as long as the subject of the clerihew is stated in the first of the four lines of the poem and that it rhymes aabb as required.

Best regards

Chris
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