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For those who are vain
about their literary gifts there are limericks, clerihews, bouts-rimes and
bellocrimes.
LIMERICKS
Everybody thinks he knows
how to write these, but few can. The limerick is a peculiarly subtle form,
as difficult as a five-act tragedy, and in structure not unlike it. The
theme is stated in the first line, is expanded in the second, develops
into action in the third and fourth, and in the fifth attains the
catastrophe, which must be as inevitable as it is shocking, or at least
surprising.
CLERIHEWS
The "clerihew" is not so
difficult as the limerick, yet is by no means so easy as it looks. The
correct formula is
Dante Alighieri
Seldom went to the dairy.
He wrote the Inferno
On a bottle of Pernod.
Avoid the vicious practice
that has crept in recently of metrically mutilating the last line, e.g.
He wrote the Inferno
On Pernod.
This is the negation of
clerihew art.
BOUTS-RIMES
Everybody knows these and
can make something of them-a couple of rhyming words, or several couples,
being given on which to build as sensible verses as you can.
BELLOCRIMES
These are a sort of mixture
of bouts-rimes and consequences. Imperfect couplets, consisting of the
first line, or the first line and a bit, are written down suitably spaced.
Players have to complete the couplets. The paper is folded so that each
player sees only his own task.
E.g., the italicised
passages in brackets being the completions -
There was a man called
Peter Pole
(Who disapproved of birth control).
He doted on his family life,
(He very seldom beat his wife).
He ne'er had letters from the bank
Marked "Private", (for he never drank).
His wife, a large and lovely woman,
(Regarded him as barely human).
And so on. Of course the
average will not be up to the level of this noble fragment. But you can
try. |
