Golias--
Thomas Hood
Is really pretty good.
But compared to the greatest Thomas
He merely shows promise.
I like the Bridge of Sighs well enough, but comparable to Lizbie Browne?? (Well, as my old friend Henri Coulette used to say, That's horse racing.)
Terese--
Since my only claim to fame is as a clerihewist (and I modestly think I'm the best since Chesterton & Bentley),
I feel compelled to say, 1) that your clerihews shouldn't
be confined to dimeter--much of the fun of the form depends on the free lines, though of course they have to sound right; 2) the trouble with your samples is that they are not funny enough; and 3) the rhymes need to be funnier, AND
they must be exact, not merely close, AND they can't seem strained for, as some of yours do seem to be. I'll copy out six of my voluminous production, the six I think the best
and funniest, as examples of what I mean:
Charles Bukowski
Could never find his housekey,
But being a total souse
He was lucky just to find his house.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Was a very strange crietzsche:
He dreamt of mounting a little wench
And screamaing, "Ubermensch!"
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Had more on his mind than his belly.
One can only take pity on
The author of Epipsychidion.
John Dryden
Never looked for a hole to hide in.
Did he run away from MacFlecknoe?
Heck, no.'
Oscar Wilde
Was most unjustly reviled:
Merely for loving his neighbor
He got two years' hard labor.
Johann Sebastian Bach
At 2 a.m. sighed, "Ach,
Bring me some coffee, I gotta
Finish a cantata."
(Well, I can't resist--one more.)
Marianne Moore
Was prim and rather dour,
Not at all the sort of poetess
You might interest in coitus.
Now, you don't have to like them, but they are very good
specimens of the form.
|
Hybrid Mode
