Jan's Poetry Class--LIMERICK

[yvonne]

Each of your lessons reinforces my total lack of poetic talent. I don't like writing poetry, but I'm determined to do it because it's so good for me to have to follow rules and play with words.

There once was a mean little kitty
Whose hunger was not very pretty
For food she would beg
By biting my leg
Did I feed her? Not one itty bitty

My cat bit me while I was trying to come up with a limerick. Maybe I should let her inspire all my writing.

Phee

You did a great job! I love the last line...very creative!

[CatLin]

There once was a mean little kitty
Whose hunger was not very pretty
For food she would beg
By biting my leg
Did I feed her? Not one itty bitty

[CatLin]

Now my attempt at a bad pun...

There once was a man from Kentucky
Who married a woman quite plucky
When asked how she managed
To lose so much poundage
She said it was nip and a tuck-y


or with an alternate last line:


There once was a man from Kentucky
Who married a woman quite plucky
When asked how she managed
To lose so much poundage
She quipped, “It was nip and a tuck-y.”



I'm not sure about a quote in a limerick. And I apologize for the off-rhyme (what's that word again?) in 3 & 4, but the words refused to be changed.

[yvonne]

This is addicting... let me see if I can do a serious one.


Today is a gift from the Savior,
To claim and treasure and savor;
Forgotten the sorrows,
Hope for tomorrows,
For I am redeemed forever.

[pheeweed]

Phee, this one is AWESOME! You know you can always get me with a kitty poem--and this one is also flawless in rhyme, meter, and limericky-ness!

But no pun. But thanks for the encouragement. For someone with no rhythm (I can't even clap in time), I seem to be getting meter pretty well. It's rhyme that kills me.

[Verna]

Getting in on one of my favorite kinds of rhyme here

A Feline Problem

When a cat and a bird chance to meet,
For the bird to stay safe's quite a feat.
The cat, it's ironic,
Is not "catatonic."
He can leap from the old catbird seat.

[glorybee]

This is addicting... let me see if I can do a serious one.


Today is a gift from the Savior,
To claim and treasure and savor;
Forgotten the sorrows,
Hope for tomorrows,
For I am redeemed forever.

Yvonne, this one should be sung in churches--or shouted from the rooftops!

[glorybee]

Getting in on one of my favorite kinds of rhyme here

A Feline Problem

When a cat and a bird chance to meet,
For the bird to stay safe's quite a feat.
The cat, it's ironic,
Is not "catatonic."
He can leap from the old catbird seat.

Great pun at the end, birthday gal, and wonderful rhyme in the couplet. Incidentally, my own cat finds birds beneath her dignity.

[Allison]

There once was a lady from Spain;
Described the location of rain.
Where it is quite flat
Is where the rain's at
It falls mainly into the plain


I don't know if that last line counts as a "punch."

And how close do the rhymes need to be? For example, if I"m using "Nashville" at the end of line one, do I need to rhyme "nash" and "ville" with something like Bashville, or can I get away with just rhyming "ville," and using something like "bill?"

lol Hope that makes sense.

[glorybee]

Allison, that's a great one!

Good question about the rhyming. My preference would be the more exact rhyme--go with "Bashville." There's some rule about rhyming words of more than one syllable. I'm too sleepy to say it absolutely correctly, but it's something like this: when rhyming words of more than one syllable, the rhyme should "match" from the syllable with the accent.

So in NASH ville, the accent is on NASH. So that's the syllable that should rhyme.

If it was a three syllable word, like BEAU ti ful, you'd have to rhyme from BEAU...so DU ti ful would rhyme, but AW ful would not.

Make sense?

[yvonne]

Allison, that's a great one!

Good question about the rhyming. My preference would be the more exact rhyme--go with "Bashville." There's some rule about rhyming words of more than one syllable. I'm too sleepy to say it absolutely correctly, but it's something like this: when rhyming words of more than one syllable, the rhyme should "match" from the syllable with the accent.

So in NASH ville, the accent is on NASH. So that's the syllable that should rhyme.

If it was a three syllable word, like BEAU ti ful, you'd have to rhyme from BEAU...so DU ti ful would rhyme, but AW ful would not.

Make sense?

I wondered if there was some rule about it.

What if a word had more than one accented syllable - like cappuccino?
Would you be able to just rhyme the "cino" part of it?

[glorybee]

Vonnie, a perfect rhyme would be "frappucino". But a good poet could also make "neutrino" work. I'd say, off the top of my head, that either accented syllable could be rhymed.

Any other poetry experts want to weigh in on this one?

[pheeweed]

Allison, that's a great one!

Good question about the rhyming. My preference would be the more exact rhyme--go with "Bashville." There's some rule about rhyming words of more than one syllable. I'm too sleepy to say it absolutely correctly, but it's something like this: when rhyming words of more than one syllable, the rhyme should "match" from the syllable with the accent.

So in NASH ville, the accent is on NASH. So that's the syllable that should rhyme.

would bashful be acceptable?

[glorybee]

Phee, I think that's a "pretty darned close" rhyme, but it's not an exact rhyme. So whether you're going to use it or not depends on the mood of the poem. In light-hearted verse, sometimes inexact rhymes add to the fun. And lots of very serious poetry uses "slant rhyme" (the literary term) and no one bats an eye.

However, if you're going for absolute precision in rhyme, bashful/Nashville might not be close enough.

Of course, it also depends on your pronunciation of both words. In my mind, the /u/ in bashful doesn't have quite the same sound as the /i/ in Nashville. But some regional speakers might pronounce the city as "Nash-vul". So for them, it'd be an exact rhyme.

Rhyming is all about vowel sounds.

[swfdoc1]

OK, Wikipedia isn't ALL bad. Since it is so much more easily accessible than any book I could recommend, I will sometimes recommend it if I personally know from other more reliable sources that what is in an article is fairly reliable.

I think three Wikipedia articles are helpful here on the question about how much has to rhyme.: Rhyme, Feminine rhyme, and Masculine rhyme.

Comments re: first article: This covers our question and more. Also, it matching what I know from various poerty "bibles" about assonance, consonance, and alliteration being consdiered types of rhyme. Whether and when these count for constructing foraml rhyme schemes is more than I can address here.

Comments re: second article: Very interesing point vis-a-vis limericks. Also very interesting point about of all things, RAP! (But beware profanity at the end.)

Comments re: third article: Rhyming only the last syllable of a word is OK here. (In the article's example, "produced" and "reduced" are obviously supposed to be pronounced "produc-ed" and reduc-ed".)