Weekly Writing Challenge--The Limerick
Join me for an easy and fun writing challenge this week--write a limerick! Yes, the limerick is a bona fide form of poetry. The limerick generally snubbed by poetry purists because of its often bawdy subjects, and its relatively late appearance on the scene. Other than through random occurences of its peculiar rhyme and metre, the limerick does not appear prior to the 1820s when nonsense rhymes that we would recognize today as limericks began appearing in children's books. But the limerick is great fun to write and to read. The rhyme scheme is usually "A-A-B-B-A". The first, second, and fifth lines are 9 syllables; the third and fourth are 5 or 6 syllables. The foot used is usually the amphibrach, a stressed syllable between two unstressed ones. Here are some examples I have enjoyed:
There once was a lady named Cager,
Who as the result of a wager,
Consented to fart
The entire oboe part
Of Mozart's quartet in F-major.
There was a young lady from Kent
Who said that she knew what it meant
When men asked her to dine,
Gave her cocktails and wine.
She knew what it meant but she went.
Labels:
LImerick,
Weekly Writing Challenge
2 comments:
There once was a man jumping hurdles,
Who tripped to avoid a turtle.
He hit a bad spot--
It hurt a lot.
Now the poor fellow's infertile.
Couldn't think of a rhyme for 'testicles.' The next one is as close to the True Spirit of Limerick that I can get without being explicitly vulgar:
I once met a man in Nantucket
Who swallowed Thai spice by the bucket.
I asked where he learned
To disregard the burn
He immediately replied, "Oh, Phuket!"
Hooray, John! I guess I'd better sign in with mine:
In the summer I never wear shoes
(Unless I go visiting zoos).
I learned this one day
When my feet went astray
In a pile of elephant gooze.
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