Here Kitty, Kitty...

For me, the most wonderful thing about poetic form is the ability to abandon it.  To know that your words slip off the tongue but refuse to rhyme.  To know that they look like a poem on the page but that their metre is rebellious, out of sync.  To know that there's a thread tying the language together which doesn't have a name, which has been created specially for this poem, because it fits.  

Limericks work when you want to have fun with ideas:

There was an old woman whose cake

Was a hit at the Veganfest Bake

When they pressed for the key

To her sticky green treats

She revealed jars of 'jus de grass snake'.

Villanelles are inextricably linked to villains in my mind (due to an obvious lack of imagination).  The repetition is fab if you have a cracking line that you're really proud of and want to share again and again and again:

Richard III

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Numb, sobbing Liz disrupts conjecture’s thrust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

Drunk Clarence sings of regal mutineers

Mad Margaret taints each act with bitter rust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

Round bishop calls for berries, feigning cheer

A messy end awaits his fruitless lust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

York's setting sun yields to a frost-tipped spear

Brash, gnashing boar's impatient dash through dust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Brave Billie frames Dread Dickie; motives clear

Spiced nest retains wet seal for lack of trust

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

No pony for the king who perseveres

Bloodline of John of Gaunt smeared with mistrust

Rude ragged nurse blurs inky star to smear

Dick bores through swells of corpses clutching Lear.

But these poems don't speak in the same way my free verse speaks.  They are tied down.  The ideas chase the shapes rather than the other way round.  Which is why I love to pervert form, to know it and then abandon it - with abandon:

Fat Cat Demands

Every day he must feast on the fishes, consume the cream,

or small corpses will be written on the doorstep:

a head, a limb

a baby, a foetus.

Veiled threats scribbled in net curtains with claws.

Damp stains in the corner that soap won’t shift.

pivotal puss

penned population

Selfish Kitty – too vital to die, too big to break:

Roll him down the steps of St Paul’s and he purrs,

The cat got the cream and came back for the herd.

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Nantucket

By Ashley Lister

Like others on this blog, I have favourite poems. Ordinarily I cite Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ as my favourite because I think it’s dramatic and beautifully structured. Sometimes I might mention something by Shakespeare just to show I’m a classy type of bloke what has got a proper education and knows his sonnets and stuff.

However, when someone asks me to recite a verse off the top of my head, I automatically go to the limerick. I’ve written of my passion for this particular form of poetry before on this blog. But, previously, I skirted around the pleasure I take from vulgar limericks.

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

His daughter, called Nan

Ran off with a man

And as for the bucket, Nan took it.

I recite this version in class because it’s more acceptable than the obscene version. I’ve reprinted the obscene version below with the offending language carefully censored.

There once was a man from Nantucket

Whose **** was so long he could suck it.

He said with a grin

As he wiped off his chin,

“If my ear was a **** I could **** it.”

Why do I like the limerick? It’s fun. It’s vulgar (and those who know me will probably appreciate that I enjoy dallying with vulgarity). But it’s also a legitimate form of poetry exemplifying balanced meter and disciplined rhyme schemes. It is characterised by the a-a-b-b-a rhyme scheme. And it’s fairly easy for anyone to attempt.

A vice both obscene and unsavoury

Kept the Bishop of Barking in slavery

With horrible howls

He deflowered young owls

That he lured to his underground aviary.

The sophisticated rhyme scheme in the previous limerick is quite remarkable. The three syllable rhyme (ay-var-ee) at the end of lines 1, 2 and 5 is a powerful reminder of the poem’s strong construction. The same can be said for the rhyme in lines 3 and 4 (ow-uls). Not bad for a throwaway verse based on a bishop having sex with owls.

There was a young woman from Leeds

Who swallowed a packet of seeds

Within half an hour

Her **** grew a flower

And her **** was a bundle of weeds.

In this limerick the rhyme on lines 3 and 4 depends on a diphthong. Again, the double impact of the sound reinforces the poem’s rigid form. Even the bimoraic syllables in lines 1, 2 and 5 (potentially weighted as trimoraic or superheavy when you take into account the final consonant cluster of the /ds/ sounds) add to the imposing structure of the form. Or, without the academic goobledegook: the strong construction can be heard because of the careful use of repeated multiple syllable sounds. Such constructions don’t just happen by accident.

There once was a young man called Paul

Who had a hexagonal ball

The square of its weight

And his ****’s length (plus eight)

Is his phone number – give him a call.

As others on this blog have shown this week, there are some remarkable poems out there that deserve to be regarded as favourites. But, as I hope these examples show – even the most vulgar of anonymous rhymes can hold a deserved place in our affections.

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There was an old man from Blackpool…

By Ashley Lister

My father was a music hall comedian. I’m not saying his material was bad but, on the night variety died, his act was held for questioning.

Actually, that’s unfair.

He was very good at making people laugh. I remember his last words to me. “Don’t turn the machine off. Please. Please, for the love of God. I’m sure I’ll recover. I don’t want to die.” How we all chuckled.

But I’m not sure if it’s because of father’s influence that I’ve developed my lifelong passion for humour.

“Do I make you laugh?” I asked my wife.

“Not when you’ve got your clothes on,” she replied.

I think that’s what she said. It’s difficult to tell what someone’s saying when they’ve always got a pie in their mouth. Not that I’m saying my wife’s fat, but her patronus is a cake. (A mysognistic northern joke there for all the Harry Potter fans reading this. Talk about aiming at a niche market).

Humour is such a personal thing that it’s probably encoded in our DNA. Freud talked about humour in terms of the tendentious and the innocent, although why we listen to a German talking about humour is a mystery to me. It’s like listening to a Frenchman talk about bravery, or a Canadian sing about irony, or a Spaniard talk about compassion for animals… (Have I offended enough stereotypes yet with this postmodern humour?)

In poetry the form most commonly associated with humour is the limerick. And, whilst Shaun was singing the praises of Edward Lear at the start of this week, I have to admit I find him annoying. (Lear not Shaun. I think Shaun is perfectly lovely). Too often Lear’s final rhymes merely reiterate the sentiment expressed in the opening line. Here’s an example:

There was an Old Man of the Wrekin
Whose shoes made a horrible creaking
But they said, 'Tell us whether,
Your shoes are of leather,
Or of what, you Old Man of the Wrekin?'

To me, the final line in this Lear limerick seems like a weak conclusion to a potentially stylish verse. Lear could have had the final rhyme of squeakin’, leakin’, Peking or a myriad other alternative rhymes that would be superior to the reiteration of the Old Man of Wrekin.

However, rather than write a limerick to conclude this post, I’d like to see regular readers contributing limericks in the comments box below. For those who are unsure how to start, I’d suggest you begin with the words:

There was an old man from Blackpool…

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