Making light verse

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Jul 292008
 

This is what happens when you get a bunch of literary types together.

(PS, the original link that triggered it all is amusing.)


  8 Responses to “Making light verse”

  1. Richard Boehme says:
    July 29, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Thank you, my day that did make
    After clicking I doubled my take
    With intensity my laughter rising,
    I read the whole which was comprising
    A most excellent way
    To end my workday
    And now, forsooth, must I break.

  2. Richard Bartle says:
    July 29, 2008 at 11:56 pm

    Oh gawd, not Limericks, anything but Limericks…

    Richard

  3. Crwth says:
    July 30, 2008 at 7:30 am

    I rolled my eyes at this until I actually went to the dictionary site and searched…

    A Welshman remembers his youth,
    When he plucked on the strings of a crwth.
    That’s a fiddle of sorts
    With a spelling that sports
    An unusual vowel, in trwth.

  4. Eolirin says:
    July 30, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    Bah, Richard, you crazy Limerick haters. They can be just as refined as *any* other form of rhyme. The fact that it’s got a sing song meter doesn’t in any way diminish it’s use. And there’s no reason they have to be used for humor either.

    I have in fact written a very long scathing political commentary on the war in Iraq in limerick form, without resorting to nonsense like “dinner switch” or broken meter.

  5. Richard Bartle says:
    July 31, 2008 at 5:27 am

    Eolirin>They can be just as refined as *any* other form of rhyme.

    Yes, they CAN be, but they’re almost always NOT.

    >The fact that it’s got a sing song meter doesn’t in any way diminish it’s use.

    That depends on the use. If the use is “lookit I wrote a Limerick, gratz me” then its use would be diminished whatever its meter. As it happens, I don’t like the structure of Limericks anyway – it sets up the final line as a punchline whether you want it to be one or not – but that isn’t the main reason I dislike them. What annoys me is the general view that anything written as a Limerick gets +10 humour and that writing one is something to be celebrated.

    >And there’s no reason they have to be used for humor either.

    Right, but most of them ARE used for humour – badly.

    I could perhaps live with it if people only ever used the idea for scathing political commentaries, but they don’t. They read 20-verse ones at weddings and we’re expected to laugh.

    Richard

  6. Eolirin says:
    July 31, 2008 at 7:25 am

    Well, that’s their problem, not the limerick’s. 😛 Make fun of people abusing it instead of treating it properly, but you don’t need to bash on the form just because the average content is less than perfect. That’d be kind of like me complaining “Oh no, not another MMORPG, they’re all so grindy!” Well, many of them are, but they hardly have to be, and it’s the designer’s implementation not the actual genre that’s at fault. (Not using the term virtual world here, because that’d be like me saying “Oh no, not another poem” instead of “not another limerick”.)

    You are right that they set up the final line to act as the thrust of the point, whether it’s desired or not, but that’s a limitation that can be worked within to good effect if you give it focus and attention. Limitations force you to be creative.

    If you looked at the OEDILF a little closer, you’d find that most of them are actually of the better formed type. Just at random, there’s one that defines the biblical context of Aaron’s Rod:

    “Let them go — all my people,” he said.
    “You’ll relent when your priests’ snakes are fed
    To the serpent from God.
    He will change Aaron’s rod.”
    Pharaoh’s heart became hardened instead.

    The Baby’s Breath flower:
    Baby’s breath lends a certain cachet
    To a garland or bridal bouquet.
    Tiny flowers so white
    Frame this delicate sight,
    Meaning love everlasting, they say.

    The Babel Fish, and then Automatic Translation respectively:
    Now, I don’t speak your language, I fear,
    Yet your meaning’s abundantly clear.
    I’m no mind-reading boy,
    Or an empath like Troi…
    It’s this Babel fish stuck in my ear.

    The translation I got from my test
    Was “Invisible idiot”. Guessed
    The source you might find?
    “Out of sight, out of mind”!
    Automation leaves meaning compressed.

    See, these are all what I’d classify as “good” limerick, and pretty much the rest of the site follows suit; these aren’t really cherry picked, they were more or less randomly selected. I happen to like the form because it’s very easy to maintain the meter, easier than just about any other rhyming form I’ve come in contact with, because the necessary meter is obvious, and breaking it is thus easy to detect. The rise and fall of sound is baked in to the form to a much greater degree than you’d get with say sonnets. This is both a blessing and a curse in many respects. It’s useful and limiting at the same time. But as I said before, limitations force you to be creative.

  7. Tim says:
    July 31, 2008 at 8:53 am

    I would propose the following four types of poetry as posted in online forums of communications…

    Artle – Written in refined poetic forms such as sonnets
    Fartle – Includes potty humor
    Smartle – Includes clever wordplay or allusion
    Bartle – Is not a limerick

  8. Eolirin says:
    July 31, 2008 at 10:18 am

    Haha.

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