Poetics and Ruminations

Form of the Week 36: The Limerick

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.

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The limerick is a form of light verse (vers de société). The alleged French ancestry of the limerick has been disputed.  Some authorities feel it is a native English form, descended from the madsong stanza. The madsong is any lyric sung by a madman or a fool, but there is a particular Form of the Week 35:  in which many such lyrics traditionally appear. The madsong stanza is said to be a descendant of the main stanza of "The Cuckoo Song":

 

THE CUCKOO SONG

 

Sing cuckoo now! Sing cuckoo!

Sing cuckoo! Sing cuckoo now!

 

Summer is a-coming in,

Loudly sing cuckoo!

         It grows the seed

         And blows the mead,

And springs the wood anew —

 

         Sing cuckoo!

 

The ewe bleats after the lamb,

And after the calf, the cow;

         The bullock starts,

         The buck farts —

Merry sing cuckoo!

 

         Cuckoo, cuckoo!

Well sing ye, cuckoo,

Nor cease ye never, now!

 

Anonymous (v. Wesli Court)

 

Written in strong-stress prosody (podics), the first, second and fifth lines of the main stanza (beginning above with line three) are tripodic, the third and fourth are dipodic.  The lines rhyme or consonate a³ b³ c² c² b³, d³ e³ f² f² e³ , and so on.  The long lines often end on an unstressed syllable (a falling ending), and there are internal sonic effects, including alliteration and assonance.

         Here is a twentieth-century send-up of “The Cuckoo Song”:

 

ANCIENT MUSIC

 

Winter is icummen in,

Lhude sing Goddamm,

Raineth drop and staineth slop,

And how the wind doth ramm!

                  Sing: Goddammm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,

An ague hath my ham.

Freezeth river, turneth liver,

                  Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, ‘tis why I am, Goddamm,

                  So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,

Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

 

Ezra Pound

 

This anonymous madsong following derives from the 16th century, and there are many versions of it; this is a shorter one:

 

TOM O'BEDLAM'S SONG

 

From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rags would rend ye,

                  All the spirits that stand

By the naked man

In the book of moons defend ye!

 

I slept not since the Conquest;

Till then I never waked

                  Till the roguish boy

Of love, where I lay,

Found me and stripped me naked.

 

The moon's my constant mistress

And the lonely owl my marrow;

         The flaming drake

         And the nighthawk make

Me music, to my sorrow.

 

I know more than Apollo,

For, oft when he lies sleeping,

         I behold the stars

         At mortal wars,

And the rounded welkin weeping.

 

The moon embraces her shepherd,

And the queen of love her warrior;

         While the first doth horn

         The stars of morn,

And the next the heavenly farrier.

 

With a host of furious fancies

Whereof I am commander,

         With a burning spear

         And a horse of air

To the wilderness I wander.

 

With a knight of ghosts and shadows

I'm summoned to a tourney

         Ten leagues beyond

         The wide world's end —

I think it is no journey.

 

Anonymous (v. Wesli Court)

 

However, the Anglo-Norman background of this form is probably not truly disputable, because it is clearly a podic form, and podic prosody developed after Chaucer, John Gower, and the Scottish Chaucerians adapted French syllabic verse to English accentual verse and adopted Norman rhyming.

The limerick is a quantitative accentual-syllabic quintet turning on two rhymes: aabba.  Lines 1, 2, and 5 have an iamb and two anapests, in that order; lines 3 and 4 have either an iamb and an anapest, in that order, or two anapests.  Line 5 can be merely a modified repetition of line 1 (AabbA), as the 19th century poet Edward Lear practiced it, but one of the oldest identifiable limericks also used this device: "Tobacco" is from Michael East's Second Set of Madrigals, published in 1606.  Whether East himself wrote it is moot.

 

TOBACCO

 

O metaphysical tobacco,

Fetched as far as from Morocco,

         Thy searching fume

         Exhales the rheum,

O metaphysical tobacco!

 

Michael East (?)

 

Despite the popularity of the limerick in the twenty-first century, the older folk tradition of the madsong can still be found in recent use. Here is a children’s game song that was current in New England at least as late as the 1940’s:

 

STREET SONG      

 

Help! Murder! Police!

My mother fell in the grease!

         I laughed so hard

         I fell in the lard.

Help! Murder! Police!

 

Anonymous

 

Many experiments have been enacted with the limerick form. Among other things, it has been used with some success as a stanza pattern rather than as a poem form. Changing its hard and wrenched rhymes to consonances, however, produces some strange results:

 

A ROBBERY

 

Some thieves sacked the home of Miss Hughes

Who owned a remarkable nose.

         She said, "Sirs, I shall sneeze

         And alert the police

If you don't get out of my house.”

 

Lewis Turco

 

A while back I posted this limerick on my Facebook page:

 

WEINER IN A BUN

 

A fellow named Anthony Weiner

Was fond of his penis' demeanor,

          So he mailed its portrait

          To girls...six or eight,

Who remarked that they wished it were cleaner.

 

Gary Getchell responded, “I tried to substitute ‘hot dog’ for ‘weiner,’ but the limerick never did work out! Lew ... you are the pro! Maybe you can show me how to do it!”

 

I’m happy to accede. We’ll begin with this little “fill-in-the-blank” exercise:

 

MAYOR BOB FILLNER OF SAN DIEGO

 

Bob liked to pat girls on the (fill in the blank)

And tickle their (fill in the blank) with his (fill in the blank).

      He'd no hope of Filner

      With fun or of killner

With wit, nor of making her (fill in the blank).

 

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Paean for the Class of '52

YEAR BY YEAR

By Lewis Turco (a.k.a. "Wesli Court)

Listen to Lewis Turco read "Year by Year."

 

When we are born we have no clue

Why we are here, what we should do,

Therefore we flail about and yell

Till we are changed or held and fed,

And then at last, when all is well,

We take the world into our head,

Into our hands, until our fear

Begins to wane and disappear.

 

We enter school and learn to read

And how to cope with every need

That rises out of books and play.

We learn to cope with those around us

With whom we interact each day,

With all the people who surround us.

As we grow older year by year

Our playmates start to disappear.

 

Then we enter adolescence

To discover that the essence

Of existence seems hormonal:

We must learn to deal with excess

Of enticements pheremonal,

With the battle of the sexes.

As we grow older year by year

Our girl and boy friends disappear.

 

When finally we come of age

We take our place upon the stage

Of life and do what adults do:

Choose a career and graduate,

Settle on a friend or two,

Begin to think about a mate.

So we mature a bit each year,

And see our lovers disappear.

 

We settle down and get a house

Or an apartment with a spouse

Or live-in. Then the kids arrive

To take our energy and time —

No matter what, they seem to thrive.

We do as well, we’re in our prime

Until there comes that primal year

When all our children disappear.

 

The two of us are left alone

And then, perhaps, there’s only one

Because what else is there to do

Except look back and try to find

The future that we barely knew

Before it started to unwind

And we grew older, year by year,

Watching our elders disappear?

 

Now here we are. The moon turns blue

No longer and the days are few

When we have anything of note

To celebrate or fill our minds.

We have no projects to promote

Or interests of different kinds,

For we’ve grown older year by year

And seen our lifetime disappear.

from The Gathering of the Elders and Other Poems by “Wesli Court,” a.k.a. Lewis Turco, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2010, ISBN 978-1-932842-43-2, trade paperback, 115 pp. 

 

PAEAN FOR THE MERIDEN HIGH SCHOOL

   CLASS OF 1952 80^TH BIRTHDAY BASH

                Saturday, June 21, 2014

 

          There’s certainly nobody new

           In the Class of ’52.

                    Since we’re turning four-score

                    We’ll party once more

           This year and drink toasts to the few.

 

           Lew Turco

 

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SHAKESPEARE GNOMES

 

Attraction

 

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her womanhood, for I am merely male.

 

 

Daydreams

 

O what men dare do! What men may do!

It’s fun to think what women may do too!

 

 

Owlishness

 

We should be woo’d and were not made to woo,

It matters not a whit, to wit, nor who.

 

Falstaff’s Callgirl

 

I follow him to serve my turn upon him –

The others do not even care to con him.

 

 

Genomic Imperative

 

Asses are made to bear, and so are you

Made to bare your ass to quite a few.

 

 

Pursuit

 

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

The waistline where I most would like to go.

 

 

 

 

MADSONG: AN OLD TALE RETURNED

 

Most lovers are good in a clinch,

They do very well in a pinch.

       They clutch a few straws.

        Loosen their drawers —

Break some conundrums? A cinch!

 

A lover's a fellow with bells

But only one clapper that swells

      And makes such a dong

      Nell breaks into song 

And then vents a series of yells.

 

A maiden must hold up her head

After she gets out of bed

      And heads out of doors,

      Joins society's wars

To show she's been very well bred.

 

"Good heavens!" the neighbors will cry,

"You're looking uncommonly spry!

      Your skirt is quite rumpled,

      Your bodice is crumpled,

And there's an odd gleam in your eye!"

 

Her sweetheart sneaks out the rear window,

Acts like a weed in a windrow,

      But he will return,

      Though his mistress may burn,

For she has been labeled a bimbo.

 

Lewis Turco

All rights reserved.

 

 

Dual Duel Duet

 

 

  

PART 1: IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE

(Some Years Ago)

 

The man on the ground is Petraeus,

A soldier who may not dismay us

         Until, with a sigh,

         He rolls out the lie

He’s bound to roll out to betray us.

 

 

PART 2: A  HARD ONE TO SWALLOW

(Today)

 

The man in the bed was Petraeus;

His tricks ‘twixt the sheets might dismay us,

         But they’re nothing at all

         To the fibs he let fall

On his spouse while he worked to betray us. 

 

Copyright by Wesli Court

R. I. P. May Laura Putnam

Lewis, Luigi, May, c. 1935

MAYDAY 2012

 

For a year now this date has been laden

Not with the birth of a maiden —

         May Putnam, my mother,*

         But the death of another —

The monster Osama bin Laden.

____

* May 1, 1899-November 25, 1985.

 

State Penn Impending

There once was a coach named Paterno

Whose aide was discovered insterno.

         He told not a soul —

         Merely plugged up that hole

With a silence that loosed an Inferno. 

 

SANDUSKY Q-T

 

There once was a jock named McQueary

Who caught a compeer acting queerly.

         He told Joe Paterno

         Who said of this porno,

“I’ll go to the dean with your query.”

 

FISHY FRED

 

There once was a fool named Zarguna

Who hadn’t the brains of a tuna,

         So he took a great notion

         To jump in the ocean

And enter a school off Laguna.

 

Copyright © 2011, Wesli Court. All rights reserved.

 

The Ballad of Lake Wobegon

“I think he's losing it: his monologues recently often center about fart jokes or adolescent moonings over girls in grade school.” — A native Minnesotan.

 

A fellow named Garrison Keillor

Decided to be the big dealer

     Of free public verse

     More prolix than terse

And full of quotidian flea-lore.

 

He delved in review books to find

Material that might be mined

     And put out to flog

     On his PBS blog

Where “excellence” was undefined.

 

The peots he chose were doggone

Happy to be Wobegon —

     They fawned willy-nilly

     And, though they were silly,

They always had peoms to pawn.

 

The songs that he loved were so bad

They smelled like a midden of shad

     But sounded much worse

     Than even his verse

And drove musicologists mad:

 

One, “Jesus Put a Yodel in My Soul,” fell

As flat as a pancake in Hell.

     Folks wanted to scoff,

     But it so turned them off

That they spewed and began to expel, 

 

But he played it again the next day!

The hairs of his hearers turned gray,

         Except for some mules

         Who giggled like fools

And asses that started to bray.

 

And, speaking of smells, he told jokes

That painted a picture in strokes

     So windy and gassy

     They didn’t sound classy

To even some Wobegon folks.

 

The stories he told of the maids

He’d known in his earlier grades

     Were terribly sad —

     No longer a lad,

He still can’t get over their braids.

 

Beware of the man who is hairy, son,

He might be an ogre or fairy, son.

     If he proffers a feeler

     He might be a Keillor

Of quality — you must be wary, son.

 

Wesli Court 

A Basketball Apology

Once, long ago, in a pretty town named Storrs where I was young and a student, I attended a basketball game and watched my team do this:

 

           But now, tonight, many weeks after I had given up on another team fielded by my Alma Mater when they emerged from Big East Conference play with a 9-9 record, I am forced to my knees to beg their forgiveness, for I watched these young men and their ancient coach (though he is not as ancient as I) perform an absolutely incredible run of wins to become, first, Maui Invitational Tournament Champions, then Big East Tournament Champions, and at last National Champions, not having lost a single game, all season long, to any team outside the Big East! I’m glad I lived long enough to witness this feat and to deliver to the Huskies

A BELATED APOLOGY

Upon the Occasion of UConn’s Winning its Third National NCAA Basketball Men’s Championship

on April 5^th, 2011.

There once was a coach named Calhoun

Who pricked an enormous balloon

          When he turned poor old Butler

          Back into a scuttler

And returned the team to its cocoon.

 

In fact, now that I think about it, I dedicate my original poem to the Butler basketball team who tonight managed to shoot the lowest percentage of baskets since 1950 when I was still a high school student in Meriden, Connecticut.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Wednesday, March 2, 2011

THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL

March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991

 

Geisel was mothered by Goose,

And so, being somewhat obtuse,

         He tripped on a gans,

         Was impaled by a Lantz

And called himself Old Doctor Seuss.

 

Uncle Wesli’s New Mother Goose No. 11

 

Listen to Wesli Court read Piggery Dog

PIGGERY DOG

On the 10^th of July, 2001 I sent a letter to Dana Gioia in Santa Rosa, California, that said in part, “I write very little these days. My last poem you probably saw in The Formalist, ‘The Gathering of the Elders.’ My last except for this, which I wrote for my [then five-year-old] granddaughter, Jessima, when we passed a sign in Augusta [Maine] that read, “Piggery Road” --

Piggery Diggery Dog,

We’re supping high off the hog,

On fatback and bacon

With all else forsaken,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

         Today [yesterday], Thursday, 24 June 2010, I ran across that letter and the stanza that I’d never done anything with. Because Jessima, now a teen-ager, and her little sister Phoebe, six, are staying with my wife Jean and me while their folks are attending a conference in Washington, DC, I wrote the rest of this nursery rhyme for the two of them (but mostly for Phoebe, of course — Jessie is ‘way too sophisticated now):

 

Piggery Diggery Dog,

We’re supping high off the hog,

On fatback and bacon

With all else forsaken,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

 

Piggery Diggery Dog,

My brain is all in a fog,

         My thoughts are as misty

         As Agatha Christie,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

 

Piggery Diggery Dog,

My sister fell off of a log,

         She landed akimbo

         Then slipped into Limbo,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

 

Piggery Diggery Dog,

My engine is slipping a cog,

         It’s all out of whack

         And jumping the track,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

 

Piggery Diggery Dog,

The camel is out for a jog,

         The silly giraffe

         Is aching to laugh,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

 

Piggery Diggery Dog,

Look out for that fat pollywog

         Who thinks it’s a toad

         While crossing the road,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

 

Piggery Diggery Dog.

Your eyeballs are all of agog,

         They’re crossed and they’re walleyed

         And trying to backslide,

Piggery Diggery Dog.

 

Piggery Diggery Dog.

I’m done with this droll catalogue

         And if you want more

         Then try not to snore

And furnish your own epilogue.