Tag Archives: clerihew

Blast from the Past, July 30, 2018

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On this date 8 years ago, we were asked to write a Clerihew.  I wrote several, which are below. You can also find a definition of the Clerihew there. Thanks for viewing this Blast from the Past!

lifelessons
lifelessons
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lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

 

It may be I will live to rue
the day I wrote each clerihew.
They may invite derisive snorts,
yet here they are with all their warts:

The word is out that Geoffrey Chaucer
never bothered with a saucer,
for though he raised many a couplet,
he always held them fully uplet!

Some have charged Truman Capote
with writing that is too emotey.
but though he was no macho stud,
I know that he wrote in cold blood.A clerihew has the following properties:

  • It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; it mostly pokes fun at famous people
  • It has four lines of irregular length and metre (for comic effect)
  • The rhyme structure is AABB; the subject matter and wording are often humorously contrived in order to achieve a rhyme, including the use of phrases in Latin, French and other non-English languages[2]
  • The first line contains, and may consist solely of, the subject’s name.

NaPoWriMo Day 14: Clerihew

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The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a Clerihew.  Not my favorite form.  Ranks right down there with the Limerick, but here goes:

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We must pity Kim Kardashian,
whose entire sense of fas-shion
is comprised of just one thing, my dear:
what most accents her derrière.

Clerihew, Two-on-Two–NaPoWriMo 2015, Day 25

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Clerihew  Two-on-Two

The word is out that Geoffrey Chaucer
never bothered with a saucer,
for though he raised many a couplet,
he always held them fully uplet!

Some have charged Truman Capote
with writing that is too emotey.
but though he was no macho stud,
I know that he wrote in cold blood.

The prompt today was to write a clerihew. A clerihew has the following properties:

  • It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; it mostly pokes fun at famous people
  • It has four lines of irregular length and metre (for comic effect)
  • The rhyme structure is AABB; the subject matter and wording are often humorously contrived in order to achieve a rhyme, including the use of phrases in Latin, French and other non-English languages[2]
  • The first line contains, and may consist solely of, the subject’s name. According to a letter in the Spectator in the 1960s, Bentley said that a true clerihew has to have the name “at the end of the first line”, as the whole point was the skill in rhyming awkward names.[3]

Clerihews are not satirical or abusive, but they target famous individuals and reposition them in an absurd, anachronistic or commonplace setting, often giving them an over-simplified and slightly garbled description (not unlike the schoolboy style of 1066 and All That). The unbalanced and unpolished poetic meter and line length parody the limerick, and the clerihew in form also parodies the eulogy.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/byobookworm/