[Lewis Turco]

Originally Posted by Jayne Osborn

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

Certainly the "clerihew" is in the fourth edition of THE BOOK OF FORMS. It is listed alphabetically on page 161 where the reader is directed to a description of the form under "satirical poetry" on pages 328-329.

Lew Turco