Limericks
As I said back in "Lesson 1": limericks are short, stand -alone poems that are only 5 lines long. Being short, you the poet, have to use the right words to get your meaning across.
The history of why limericks are called "limericks" is very cloudy. The common thought is that the name stemmed from an Irish drinking game where each contestant would sing or say a whole verse and then the next contestant would say his piece. Repetition and pausing were not allowed and were punishable by forfeits (usually drinking ones!). As these verses were usually dependent on rhyming place names with people, the city of "Limerick" gave massive problems with rhymes unless a truly gross word was used. This is the idea why so many limericks seem to start:
"There was an old man from Tralee... " etc. etc.
This gave rise to most Limericks being foul, nasty rhymes but funny with it.
This is one of the most common Limericks out there; you may recognize it!
Hickory, dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory dickory dock
As you can see Lines 1, 2 and 5 are rhyming with each other and lines 3 and 4 also rhyme with each other.
They also have a fairly rigid syllable structure:
Hick | or | y | dick | or | y | dock
The | mouse | ran | up | the | clock
The | clock | struck | one
The | mouse | was | done
Hick | or | y | dick | or | y | dock
Seeing as this is a blog about breakups and makeups; how about a breakup limerick then:
He thought her a bit over-rated
She said that he was out-dated
Strange as it seems
They both had bad dreams
Now they are two, unrelated!
Personally I would think that using Limericks as a style of breakup poem would be difficult due to them being on the whole funny, nonsense verses.
RSS Feed