Sometimes I go back and read the contest and challenge posts at classicalpoets.org after the pages have filled up and been closed to further comments.
During my scheduled offline time this weekend I read the limericks submitted to a challenge: Summarize a well-known poem in the form of a limerick.
The limericks appear as comments on the challenge, interspersed with actual comments by fellow versifiers. As this site is read all around the world, some replies come from students of English as a Foreign Language. Some people post severe criticism, even of these students' work, because this is the site for poems that follow strict traditional rules. There are lots of other sites for Bad Poetry (T.M.), which usually follows some traditional rule or other, but not strictly, and Free Verse, which has no rules.
Since the challenge was long over I didn't plan to write a limerick for it, but as I read some of the revisions people made of their own and others' imperfect limericks, more revisions started coming to mind.
I don't believe Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" was meant to be a limerick. I believe it was based on a true story, possibly because I read it for the first time shortly after David Vetter died. (Those who can stand to look at John Travolta may enjoy the movie made about his short life: click here.) Some people really do have to live in quarantine or not at all.
Words that do justice to serious thoughts tend not to make good limericks. Like the senryu, which has the form but not the substance of a haiku, a serious thought can be expressed in the form of a limerick and the words will still read as a serious poem. The solemn hymn "Jesus, I Will" barely misses being a limerick; it misses by being too serious, not because the first verse couldn't end with "Jesus, I dare."
So it's no wonder that the student who tackled "The Lady of Shalott" failed to produce any resemblance to a limerick at all, but why carp when it's so easy to write something that comes closer, I thought. And with that thought the Bad Poetry began.
Limerick for the Lady of Shalott and Her Doomed Love for Sir Lancelot
Immune-compromised lady of leisure
At the sight of the knight felt such pleasure
That she took the boat ride
Into town, where she died;
How could he know what desperate measure...
Limerick for Wilmot Earl of Rochester, Dropped from the Literary Canon for Being Too Angry
Ever brimming with bile and with spleen,
Even pleasure brought rages obscene
To this grouch for the ages.
Perusing his pages,
Today's grouch cries, "How splendidly mean!"
Limerick for Robert Frost and His Dust of Snow
In the forest no peace did he find
Until, from his stress nearly blind,
Flushed from hemlock, a crow
On his head shook down snow,
And the snow cooled his head and his mind.
Limerick for Emily Dickinson and Her Metaphoric Tipple
My liquor of choice is not brewed!
It's my hermitess' privilege 'tude.
As I shun the vile mob
Like a consummate snob,
I find pleasure in being a prude!
Limerick for Frost and His Yellow Wood (Yes, I'm sure this is a different image than Frost had in mind, but his actual words don't rule it out...)
Though the woods are still yellow, he's walking
Like a hunter a nuisance deer stalking.
At a fork in the road
The path that looked less trode
Made a difference. How? He is not talking.
Limerick for Frost and "Nothing Gold Can Stay," Which Is Already Shorter and Better Than a Limerick, Making This Challenge Hopeless
The poem here that suffered most cost
Was a pretty one by Robert Frost.
Though the whole world may love it,
One making fun of it
Gave up and in anger was lost.
Two-Tailed Limerick for E.E. Cummings Playing With His Manual Typewriter
I see the first robin of spring.
To others he says not a thing.
Me? I'm trying to type
What the critics call tripe,
And both of my shift keys are missing,
And from pain I hallucinate. Ding!
(I wasn't hallucinating this weekend. At least. But I felt pretty bad...one might as well laugh as grump.)
😄 Haha, now I know why E.E.Cummings writes in lowercase!
ReplyDeleteThe limericks are pretty good, I enjoyed them. And the titles are quite genius.
Thank you, dsnake1!
ReplyDeleteI love your limerick for Emily Dickinson, what fun!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ruth!
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