Poetry and limerick forms

SlowHand

Five line limerick for aabba and a place to start with your interest in poetry.

Another interesting poetry form is the quatrain:

· Quatrain
A stanza or poem of four lines.
Lines 2 and 4 must rhyme.
Lines 1 and 3 may or may not rhyme.
Rhyming lines should have a similar number of syllables.

The limerick: form, aabba
aabba form (first two lines rhyme with each other and those two lines rhyme with the last one.
The bb three and four lines rhyme with each other). This is the traditional format of the English limerick.


Poetry Forms and a place to start:
There are lots of poetic forms for poetry and limerick has three traditional forms and if you are new to limerick and looking for a starting place to begin to grow your interest in rhyme and the five line limerick form you may find it helpful to build a mental rhyming dictionary by reading the last words of the rhymes in the limerick forum. This gets your mind in a five line frame of thinking as well as adding to your mental rhyming dictionary.

The next thing to know is:
Everyone needs to start some place and the limerick five line form is a good place to begin. just work on rhyming the last lines of your limerick in the traditional aabba form (first two lines rhyme with each other and those two lines rhyme with the last one. The bb three and four lines rhyme with each other). This is the traditional format of the English limerick.

There are historically three limerick techniques and besides these there are long and short syllable forms found in classical English limerick writing(like in accented and unaccented syllables of words). Poets call this kind of attention to detail writing tight rhyme.

When you first start out be gentle with your self and enjoy learning and building your five line rhyming mental dictionary and practicing setting up your aabba rhyming patterns. You can add as much refinements as you care to as you grow in interest and ability in writing English limerick and the other rhyming form.

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SlowHand

The Limerick:
The limerick is the only fixed form indigenous to the English language.
It first appeared in Songs for the Nursery, or, Mother Goose's
Melodies for Children, published by Elizabeth Goose, (formerly Vertigoose,
married to Thomas Fleet, a Boston printer) in 1719. Moreover,
in this collection it appeared in all three of its successive forms.
The first stage opened and closed the five-line form with a nonsense
line:

Hickory, dickory, dock!
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one—
The mouse ran down,
Hickory, dickory, dock!
Nursery Rhymes, Mother Goose.

The second form, the one used by Edward Lear throughout, ended
the first and fifth line with a geographical name, at times these lines
being identical:
As I was going to Bonner,
Upon my word of honor,
I met a pig
Without a wig,
As I was going to Bonner.
Nursery Rhymes, Mother Goose.

The third and culminating form has a new rhyme sound in the fifth
line—as in this example:
There was an old soldier of Bister
Went walking one day with his sister,
When a cow at one poke
Tossed her into an oak,
Before the old gentleman missed her.
Nursery Rhymes, Mother Goose.

A classic model to follow is the famous limerick—
There was a young lady from Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
More Limericks, Cosmo Monkhouse.

The identity instead of rhyme in lines 2 and 5 cannot spoil the charm
of this, although the pure pattern would avoid it. This would be—

THE FRENCH FORMS
remembering that an extra unaccented syllable can be added either
to the 1, 2, 5 rhyme group, or to the 3, 4 group, or to both:
a TUM—ta ta TUM—ta ta TUM
ta TUM—ta ta TUM—ta ta TUM,
ta ta TUM—ta ta TUM
ta ta TUM—ta ta TUM
ta ta TUM—ta ta TUM—ta ta TUM.

Anapest Unaccent—unaccent—accent (Appertain Ap-per-tain ta - ta - TUM)

Iamb Unaccent—accent (Delight De-light ta-TUM)

In other words, an anapestic pattern, 5, 5, 3, 3, 5 feet to the lines
respectively, rhymed 1, 1,2,2, 1, usually with an iamb opening lines
1 and 2. Any trick rhyming device is permissible, as:

An amorous M. A.
Says that Cupid, that C. D.,
Doesn't cast for his health,
But is rolling in wealth—
He's the John Jaco-B. H.
Anonymous.

This must be read by pronouncing M. A. as "master of arts," and by
rhyming lines two and five properly to it—"caster of darts" and
"Jacob Astor of hearts."

Here is one of the tongue-twister variety:
A tutor who tooted the flute

Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
"Is it harder to toot, or
To tutor two tooters to toot?"
Four Limericks, Carolyn Wells.

Among other possible variations is:
There was a young lady of Diss,
Who said, "Now I think skating bliss!"
This no more will she state,
For a wheel off her skate
;siq) 3>f!i Suiqpuios dn qsiuy jaq spej^
Anonymous.

The writing of limericks at times becomes extremely popular.

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SlowHand

The erotic limerick,

What I like in my limerick, like coffee, cream and sugar with a twist of a sexy ladies hip.

3. A limerick is a five-line poem in anapestic or amphibrachic meter with a strict rhyme scheme (aabba), which intends to be witty or humorous, and is sometimes obscene with humorous intent.
Note:
anapest: Unaccent—unaccent—accent (Appertain Ap-per-tain ta-ta-TUM)

amphibrach: Unaccent—accent—unaccent (Believing Be-liev-ing ta-TUM-ta)

2. It may have its roots in the 18th century Maigue Poets of Ireland, although the form can be found in England in the early years of the century.

3. It was popularized in English by Edward Lear in the 19th century.
I like the "obscene with humorous intent" although I'd substitute obscene with erotic.

Example:
Tiger Woods limericks: http://tiger-woods-limericks.kobespecial.tel/

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_%28poetry%29

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical,

But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Lots of examples at the limerick corner: Limerick Corner--for those who love to rhyme . . .

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SlowHand

Well this is the general idea. There are so many feet in a meeter and of course these meeters have names based on how many feet in each type of meeter.

It gets, interesting, research time on the net for the detales google for the manes and examples:

Meter and Metric Feet
Meter is a comparatively regular rhythm in verse or poetry. There
are four common metric feet used in English verse. Their names are
taken over from classic durational or quantity meters. In the examples
below, the accented syllable is marked thus (/), and the unaccented
syllables thus (--). These feet are:

Well these are like small bowls but the computer standard keys don't have this symbol so, the computer put dashes where the little concave marks should be.

Name of Scan-Foot
sion Description

Note: These are the names for different kinds of feet all having different syllable arrangements which set up a rhythm pattern with in a word expressed like ta-TUM ta unaccented TUM accented.

So, if say you had a five foot line you would need to divide each word by it's accented and unaccented syllable to determine what kind of foot that word was. Here is where rhyming gets interesting. because say in an iambic pentameter you most often would have other kinds of feet in it besides iambic, but you could group the unaccented and accented syllables so that the over all affect in the rhythm of the line would be iambic or ta-TUM, ta-Tum, ta-TUM, ta-Tum, ta-tum five times.

This is where the fun begins, it's the poet's ear that determines his feel for when this sounds right with in his rhyme scheme because there is room for some veneration with in each poem according to how the poet felt the best expression in rhythm and line expressed his emotional and rhythmical intent as an artistic whole. Other words, sometimes there is more than one way to skin a cat! There are differences in poetic styles and even each poet often develops a unique stile to his rhymes. That's the art.

Notice this comment:
In practice, the spondee may be used as an iamb or as a trochee; in
combination, we may have—
In head | -long flight
in which the word is used as a trochee;
He plunged ( head-long
in which....

Here is what the details look like:

Iamb Unaccent—accent like sound: ta-TUM de-light
Trochee Accent—unaccent like sound: Tum-ta go-ing
Anapest Unaccent—unaccent—accent ta-ta-TUM ap-per-tain
Dactyl Accent—unaccent—unaccent
Example
Delight
Going
Appertain
Merrily
Example
Scanned
De-light
Go-ing
w w /
Ap-per-tain
/ w w
Mer-ri-ly
Accent
pronunciation
ta-TUM
TUM-ta
ta-ta-TUM
TUM-ta-ta
The first two feet listed below are occasionally encountered in
English verse, the third rarely or never.
/ /
Headlong Head-long TUM-TUM
w / _
Believing Be-liev-ing ta-TUM-ta
Spondee ' '
Amphibrach w ' w
Pyrrhic w w
Accent—accent
Unaccent—
accent—unaccent
Unaccent—
unaccent
with a with a
In practice, the spondee may be used as an iamb or as a trochee; in
combination, we may have—
In head | -long flight
in which the word is used as a trochee;
He plunged ( head-long
in which

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peppercorn

My thanks to Slowhand for this lesson--
Now poems that we write won't be messin'.
I've learned quite a bit,
Now I write as I sit,
All this knowledge is really a blessin'!

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Poor Brian was missing his sweetie.
They met every day -- he was greedy.
But gone for a week,
Then, his girl, he did seek,
When he found her, he ran to her, speedy.

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