Excellent thread, and you've all summed up many of the things that--to my mind--separate the poetry from the pooetry. (Great phrase, Jayne!) Off the top of my head, the only things I would add are...
1-Doggerel typically lacks the element of surprise, which is crucial not just to good light verse, but to humor in general. (Surprise can take many forms, from word choice to rhyme to unexpected points of view... and of course an unpredictable ending usually helps.)
2-Doggerel tends to be padded for the sake of meter and rhyme.
3-To me, end-stopped lines aren't necessarily a deal breaker; it depends on how they work in the poem as a whole.
|