How to write Limericks that do not rhyme - MASTER CLASS

The Limerick owes a lot to its use by Edward Lear in his book of nonsense verse and Limericks published in the mid nineteenth century. What is a Limerick? Well matwil might agree with the following:

Ti-tum titty-tum titty-tum
Titty-tum titty-tum titty-tum
Titty-tum titty-tum
Titty-tum titty-tum
Titty-tum titty-tum titty-tum

Indeed matwil might say exhange a couple of tums for a couple of bums and there you have, in a nutshell, some articles that are published on the spoof!

The secret of the Limerick lies in its rhythm and its rhyming scheme AABBA. The secret of a humorous Limerick that does not rhyme lies in the destruction of the anticipated denouement of the stanza, not the destruction of the whole Limerick.

The good satirical Limerick can destroy though, it can kill and it can do this without bloodshed, yet the victims can die of the wounds it inflicts if done at the right moment to the right victim and in the right context.

Criticism is often levelled at writers on the spoof by other writers. I have done it myself, constructively, I hope. However, if you give it out you have to be able to take it, anything else would be hypocrisy.

There is one problem though and that is that writing on the spoof website is as near to real freedom in this world that one can get without descending into anarchy. In such free places which are only ever moderated in extremis no solutions are ever found to arguments of any kind. We each have to find a modus vivendi on the spoof in the face of any opinions we might have about subjects that other writers choose. Whatever finds its way into cyberprint is the final decision of the editor. Very rarely is any subject turned away because of content.

Everyone writes as they wish about what they wish; although I do note that there is self-censorship and some subjects are left well alone. So when writer matwil in one of his articles took a pop at some of what is written here on the spoof, I couldn't resist taking a good-humoured pop back just to illustrate a point and not at all meant as a personal slight to a fellow writer.

However, I have to admit it is strange (but nevertheless alright by me) that some writers, probably old enough to know better, from the moment they get up until they collapse with typers' cramp, seem to have on their mind only what the latest popular celebrity is up to and what, to quote one writer, 'hoo haa' they can spin around it. But again, freedom is a strange thing, particularly freedom without chains.

---

A satirist writer 'matwil'
Wrote blank verse that really could kill
He said, aye there's the rub, yet
My favorite subject
The Limerick still doesn't rhyme

His prosody really was terse
It started with verse but got worse
He got really mean
With an alexandrine
And a curse on the writers he put

The Jman and Bargis ignored him
They couldn't care less that they bored him
The top man called Abel
Just rapped on the table
And remarked then how exceeding dim it was

Because we should write and let write
Work into the depths of the night
With Spears, Boyles and Coles
And tits bums and holes
To prove the might of the vagina

To pull in the reads and the rating
From pimply oiks who aren't mating
With their PC's so bored
And priapic keyboard
To find out whos dating whom

To find out in the day's headline news
Just some funny alternative views
That tickle their funnybone
And send MP's running home
And in pews make clergymen tremble

So 'matwil' one would beg to observe
Some might also get bored when you serve
Controversial rants
On the US and France
Some would say that you have nerve in fact

It's a puzzling controversy
That if humans are really so free
When one puts such a question
Some will cry out, agression!
And of pure tyranny will accuse you

It is true if you lead some will follow
If some subjects you really can't swallow
One should point out a sample
THEN lead by example,
It is quite hollow to do otherwise

This Limerick's purpose is fine
There's much humour better than mine
Some will find with regret
A Limerick's great secret
In the very last line will be found

---

It is indeed strange how a five line stanza consisting of two lines of amphibrachic/anapaestic trimeter then two lines of catalectic amphibrachic/anapaestic dimeter followed by another amphibrachic/anapaestic trimeter can prove so universally devastating or funny.

My opinion is it is because it has a beginning a middle and an end condensed in only five lines, each of which has to be to the point and each of which is essentially pertinent to lead one to the final line.

If there is a meaning of life the universe and everything it will probably be best expressed in Limerick form particularly to non-mathematicians.

Indeed, poetry among literary forms can describe what might take otherwise thousands of words, with the same elegance that a mathematical equation can describe in its simplest form a complex scientific phenomenon.

The difference between the Limerick form and other poetry though is that its rhythm and rhyme are intrinsically subversive. A Limerick can even subvert itself and I'll finish with the following from O. E. Parrot that demonstrates this with elegance.

The limerick's birth is unclear:
Its genesis owed much to Lear.
It started as clean
But soon went obscene,
And this split haunts its later career