tamerawillwissinger - The Writer's Whimsy

For the final week of my National Poetry Month/Poetry Friday essays on poetic forms, I’m talking about limericks.

LIMERICKS

Limericks are fascinating to me; they are a lot of fun to read and can be confounding to write. Nobody knows for sure where or how the limerick originated, but when I was writing The Poet's Tackle Box portion of Gone Fishing, I came across an interesting detail about this form from Burges Johnson in The New Rhyming Dictionary and Poet’s Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York: Quill/HarperResource, 2001), 37. According to Johnson, the limerick may have had an exciting start: One legend suggests that between battles, fifteenth-century Irish soldiers would recite poems about their comrades and then everyone would sing, “When we get back to Limerick town ‘twill be a glorious morning.”

The limerick is a brief, humorous poem with five total lines (a cinquain stanza) that follows the anapest rhythm of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. The first, second and fifth lines have three sets of anapests and rhyme with each other. (Anapestic trimeters.) Lines three and four have two sets of anapests and rhyme with each other. (Anapestic dimeters.) On April 7 I shared a limerick called “The Judge of Fudge” with Greg Pincus for his 30 poets/30 Days.

This week, in following my month-long inspiration from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I’ve written a poem that defines the poetic form. Here is my limerick of a limerick:

The Limerick: Poetry’s Trick

Is the limerick poetry’s trick?

With three anapest lines - each a stick,

Then two lines stubby short,

It's a puzzle to sort!

Let’s escape from this limerick – QUICK!

TRY WRITING A LIMERICK

The limerick looks simple but it’s kind of a tricky form because it has such a specific rhythm and rhyme pattern. Here are a few tips for writing a limerick:

Choose a humorous topic, something that you can joke about.

Jot down strong rhyming words that have to do with your topic. The rhyme scheme is A A B B A

Pay attention to the rhythm of the words you choose. The basic rhythm pattern goes like this:

da da DUM, da da DUM, da da DUM

da da DUM, da da DUM

da da DUM, da da DUM, da da DUM

(Here are a couple of variations to the first, second, or fifth line: DA da DUM, da da DUM, da da DUM, or da DUM, da da DUM, da da DUM. It’s okay to vary as long as the reader can pick up the anapestic rhythm in the first line.)

Narrow down to the most descriptive words, and the best rhyming words. Work with the words to find intriguing ways to say what you want to say, but that fit the rhyme and rhythm pattern.

In a way, when you're writing a limerick you’re telling a joke, so think of the last line as the “punch line.” Make sure the final line wraps up everything, is funny, references the rest of the poem, and that the rhythm and rhyme work – easy, right?

For another limerick example, check out Next Time from my book GONE FISHING: A Novel In Verse.

Enjoy writing limericks!

Thank you for joining me for this National Poetry Month series on poetic forms!

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Here are a few announcements:

Today, children's author and fifth-grade teacher Marcie Atkins is revealing the mentor text lesson plan she developed for Gone Fishing

E Kristin Anderson featured my essay on the influence Les Miserables had on my verse novel at Write All the Words

Laura Salas is hosting Poetry Friday at Writing the World for Kids

Verse Day #17 is at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves